Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Starfire
by Karkadinn
Summary: A splinter group of a Christian church starts idolizing Starfire, of all people, as an angel! Dealing with this mundane but stressful issue in turn causes the Titans to debate their own spiritual beliefs.  Final chapter and charity drive are up!
1. Chapter 1

Twinkle Twinkle Little Starfire

1

Starfire picked herself up off the ground with a grimace, thankful that she hadn't been sent crashing into any innocent bystanders by the explosion. She still wasn't entirely sure about many social norms on Earth, but even she was fairly certain that bank robbers didn't traditionally carry bazookas. Another rocket came her way, and even as her eyes went wide her battle instincts allowed her to roll up into the air and to one side. One fist carefully knocked the rocket upwards, letting it detonate harmlessly in the air. That had bee risky, but to let the rocket simply miss and hit the shop of hats behind her would have been unforgivable. For all she knew, there were mothers and children looking for hats to shade their heads from the sun's heat in there!

The criminals were hastily trying to reload their weapon, but were not particularly good at it, and opted to argue over the correct procedure in the middle of their escape. This was a mistake that Starfire exploited to the fullest, rushing forward in a whistle of wind to grab the bazooka and break it in half. Appropriately unnerved with pale and sweaty faces to match, the trio of robbers turned to flee, but it was too late. Turning their backs to her only made them easier to subdue, and Starfire had plenty of handily available scrap metal to twist delicately into restraints. She beamed at her captives with great satisfaction. Now she could hurry back to the rest of the team in case they required help dealing with Killer Moth's new swarm. They likely would have called had things been truly dire, but she worried anyway, and there was no such thing as excessive backup.

"OH THANK YOU SO MUCH!"

Starfire blinked and smiled at the tearful woman who was clinging to her ankles, one of the many who had scattered during the confusion of the initial act of holding up. Then she worriedly thought that perhaps the woman's legs had been injured and the clinging was for support. Closer inspection revealed this was not the case, and Starfire relaxed.

"And I welcome you equally much! Umm... I do not mean to damage your emotions, but could you release me, please?" She was eager to get back to her friends, but regretted the words almost instantly, as the woman whipped back, long skirt practically hissing in the air with the force of the motion.

"I'm so so sorry, I didn't mean to... it was just, I'm from the suburbs, and I've never seen you heroes up close, and I didn't, I didn't know... that rocket was coming right at me! It could have HIT me! You saved my life!"

"I am certain you would have performed a successful evasion of the projectile," Starfire said soothingly, trying to calm her with a pat on the shoulder. "It is not necessary to make a large bargain out of this unfortunate occurrence." Police sirens began to make their way to Starfire's ears, the pleasing sound of the planet's own much less noticed but no less brave heroes, according to her way of thought. "The police are able to do the wrapping upwards of things from here. I wish you a pleasant day!"

Even while departing, Starfire glanced downwards, to make sure everything was truly secure. The woman was still staring up at her, chestnut hair concealing much of her face in the wind. The eyes were still very visible however, tiny though they were from the height. Quite wide and unblinking. Starfire smiled again and waved before turning sharply and flying south, to where more urgent problems with moths awaited her intervention.

While Killer Moth put up quite the fight, ultimately the team was able to buy Cyborg the time to formulate a new nanite mutant moth pesticide that transformed his killer insect minions into perfectly normal, harmless moths. Victory would ordinarily have been celebrated at their favorite pizza parlor, but it was closed on Sundays, and so after significant debate they all agreed on taken out Chinese instead. Starfire did not approve of the lack of tangy condiment beverages, but found the sweet and sour sauce a satisfactory replacement. And since the others had been given far too much sauce for their chicken, there was even enough leftover for her to have for a midnight drink later. Robin didn't obsess over Slade, Cyborg didn't find any reasons to yell, and Raven refrained from asserting dominance over Beast Boy by means of physical aggression. Such a day was as pleasant and fulfilling as she could have hoped for.

Robin spent the late evening at the computer, doing the research he didn't want to ask Cyborg to do. Starfire refrained from telling him he was working too hard, and was in fact rather grateful that he at least wasn't in the gymn or at the training course again. He wasn't pushing himself quite so hard, and she wasn't feeling as overly conscious about how hard he did push himself, and that was what a relationship ought to be, she hoped. She did give him a light kiss on the forehead before floating to bed, though, just to remind him that he shouldn't stay up too late.

"Goodnight, dearest Robin."

"Night, Starfire."

"I love you," she put in low and sly, just to see if she could trick him into saying it back spontaneously.

"I love you too," he said automatically, toneless, eyes still fixed to the monitor. Then he jerked, suddenly realizing what he'd just said, and started looking around to see if anyone else had heard. Giggling, Starfire left him to his emotionally stunted paranoia and went up to her room.

Such a day did not prepare her for the day that was to immediately follow it. Not even a little bit.

She came downstairs, stretching and interested in a breakfast of radish of the horse, eggs, fried processed wheat slices, and fish heads when she saw the rest of her heroic family with their eyes affixed to the television and their jaws agape.

"_-and what are your plans now?_" the reporter on tv asked to someone off to one side. The camera moved right to show the very same brown-haired woman Starfire had seen at the robbery yesterday.

"_I intend to start what will hopefully be the first of many Church of Starfire branches in this God-blessed country,_" the woman replied. "_I know that it will probably take a while to get official tax-exemption status, but I'm willing to work for it. And just in the short few hours since the event, I've met dozens of others who want this just as much as I do._"

"Wh-why are you starting a church of me?" Starfire asked the television, as though it could respond, overcome with astonishment, feeling her jaw slowly reach the same level of slackness as her fellow's jaws were already at.

"Well, we here at Channel Five wish you the best of luck. Do you have any final words before we sign off?"

"Yes." The brunette's eyes were like daggers of ice, firm and unyielding. They reminded her uncomfortably of Slade, despite the fact that the woman around the eyes was rather ordinary and unintimidating, with a lumpy body and fashion sense even Starfire could recognize as unlikely to be up to date. "I'd just like to remind everyone that like the good book says, no one respects a prophet in his hometown. Or hers! Starfire's an angel, plain as day, but you just couldn't see it because it was there in front of you for so long you got used to it. The Church of Starfire will change that so that you all see the blessing before you and thank God for it." Then she smiled, a warm, not very sinister smile at all, and that was the image left in Starfire's mind as the news switched to something else, and someone turned off the tv set.

And then everyone turned to everyone else, and most of them said something that started with 'What' all at the same time.

"-is going on?"

"-was that?"

"-did you do?"

"-is an angel?" Starfire asked meekly into the barrage, trying to be a brave warrior and not shrink. They weren't accusing her of anything, they were her friends! But she could see Robin's forehead vein throbbing, and Cyborg completely oblivious to the smear of hot sauce on his mouth, and Raven with her eyes narrowed very suspiciously.

The only one who wasn't upset in some way was Beast Boy. Now that the tv was off, he had shifted over to one side, and just looked at her, grinning hugely and bobbing his head in a way she found almost perverse. She didn't like it when she didn't understand jokes. She liked it even less when Beast Boy found a joke that no one else realized was there. It was often his fault and led to bad things, but in this case, she had done it. Somehow.

"I feel that perhaps I should provide what little context I am able to offer," she started over again, ignoring Beast Boy's annoying grin to concentrate on the three friends she had who were taking this with all due solemnity. She swallowed. "Yesterday, that woman was one of several bystanders during the theft of money from the bank. She suffered no injuries but appeared to attach great importance to the event for reasons I still do not understand. We interacted briefly, I said goodbye, and... and..."

"And now you're your own religion," Raven said flatly. "Congratulations."

"Actually the lady made it sound like it wasn't a full religion," Cyborg put in as the atmosphere started to cool. "More like just another Christian denomination. You know, Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian..."

"I do not know what any of those things are any more than I know what an angel is!" Starfire half-yelled, frustration taking control briefly. "I am sorry, friends, but I do not understand why this woman has chosen to do what she did any more than you do. I do not think I did anything to provoke it."

"You didn't, Star." Robin sighed and put a hand on her shoulder. "Sometimes people can be... unpredictable. But we need to stop this. It could snowball into something big and troublesome, and change the legal status of the Titans in ways we don't want. More importantly, it could change how people feel about us in ways we don't want. You're a great teammate and, um, girlfriend," Of course that last bit had to be stammered out shifty-eyed with a blush, but at least he was getting there. "But you're not an angel, metaphors aside!"

"Is anyone going to tell me what that is or must I look at the Wikipedia again?" she demanded irritably, crossing her arms.

"An angel's just a flying person with a white dress and white wings and a harp," Beast Boy said, still the most relaxed of everyone in the room. "Dudette said you were all... beautiful and holy and stuff, and you save people, and you're from space, so you're an angel. I dunno, I think she's too kooky, no one's gonna believe that."

"An angel is a messenger of GOD, man," Cyborg said with annoyance, rubbing his forehead. He turned to Starfire. "The big deal is that she thinks that she should treat you like some perfect being sent from God to tell us humans what to do. And that ain't gonna fly. I mean, I know YOU can fly," he added, seeing her confusion, "I just mean it's not a good idea because you're as, uh, human as the rest of us. Metaphorically."

"There are way too many metaphors in this conversation. Let idiots be idiots. At least they're not calling me a demon."

"How long before they do, though, if we let them make Star an angel?" Cyborg argued. "Robin's right. We've got to put our foot down on this."

"The bottom line is that, no matter what any of us believe or don't, religion is a powerful tool. We can't become accessories to abuse of it, even if it's just by not preventing that abuse."

Feeling that she lacked the knowledge to be productive part of the conversation despite being the cause of it, Starfire quieted and contented herself mostly with listening to the team argue about the proper course of action. No one agreed exactly on what to do. Robin wanted to maintain authoritative distance and send a polite legal representative. Cyborg thought it better to ignore the woman herself for an unwinnable cause, and to instead focus on speaking with anyone who chose to follow her, using social pressure to prevent her church from growing. Beast Boy openly said he wanted to just wait and see how much funnier it got, because having a goddess for a teammate would be really cool. Raven, after correcting Beast Boy that an angel was not the same as a goddess, opined that the best response would be to go to the woman personally and tell her to stop, and be frightening about it. Yet throughout the rather confusing and vague debate, there was a common theme. A feeling that Starfire had felt for a long time, but been unable to find a way to articulate it. In this conversation about whether it was right for a woman to believe she was part of a religious belief system in some special ranked way or not, there was almost no talk at all about actual religion. And Starfire realized very strongly that she had never spoken with any of the others about what she believed spiritually, or heard expressions of faith or even the lack of it from the others.

In the middle of the full-raging debate, she raised her hand politely. With the obedient politeness of the well-trained, all four teammates quieted and looked at her. It was better than her yelling at them, for everyone involved.

"Yes, Starfire?" Robin asked exceedingly warily.

"Friends, would we not argue less about the best course of action if we had a better idea of what this woman believes in faith, and what we all believe in faith, so that we may make proper comparisons as well as contrasts? How can we assume that what she is doing is bad, when I still do not know what purpose or duties an angel serves in her faith, or how she intends to express that belief? I do not even know what all of you believe! And I think we should all know what we believe, because right now you are arguing very much from standards that remain unstated."

At this point she was puzzled to see Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Robin cough and look around, at anything except her. Perhaps there were some Earth social dynamics that she once again not understanding about boys and faith. She turned to Raven, hoping that it would relieve the boys of whatever odd anxieties they felt at the inquiry.

"For example, Raven, we have meditated together, but I do not know how that operates with regards to your faith. Do you merely use it as a mechanism to control your emotions and powers, or is there a deeper ritual meaning behind it that you have not explained to me?"

Raven was undisconcerted, but she took a few moments before responding, the faintest of wry smiles quirking her gray lips. "I have to admit, I never really thought about gods and higher meanings and the purpose of life much. Unlike most people, I knew exactly why I existed and what purpose I had in life. Frankly I'm still surprised I'm even alive. Most of my life I anticipated being turned into a portal for my demonic father, with possibly my soul being chewed on like bubblegum for all eternity afterwards."

"Bummer," Beast Boy said into the bleak silence following that gloomy statement. Starfire felt very sorry for asking.

"But I'm alive and have my own purpose to decide on now," Raven said a little more cheerfully, insofar as she was ever cheerful. "I should start thinking about these things. I don't have the excuse not to anymore. Thanks for the reminder, Starfire. What about YOU, furball?" she put to Beast Boy with a smirk. "Let me guess, you're a totemist."

Beast Boy blinked. "Dude, I don't even know what that word means." Starfire bit her lip to avoid giggling. "I'm not big on _organized_ religion," he said with a superior wave of his hand. "All that churches and donations and stuff just takes you further away from nature. Like, I believe in a God, but it's _personal_ with me. Everyone's gotta find their own way, you know?"

Raven rolled her eyes. "Typical. We don't know anything about _your_ religion because you can't _commit_ to one, just to vague feelings in your bird brain."

"Hey, it's still more than _you've_ got!"

"He has a point," Cyborg noted despite Raven's grumpy glower. "Surprisingly." As he saw the attention was focused on him, he gave a big grin. "Aright, aright. I'm Christian. Just didn't wanna get up in anyone's faces about it. Uh, Star, Christianity is that religion with the big cross symbol," he explained. "Probably what that crazy lady believes in, there's a bunch of different groups so we get all kinds. Long story short, man wasn't cool with God, God became a guy, God died, and that made everything cool again. Um, that didn't really come out right, but it's kind of hard to sum up so I'll save the details for later."

That left Robin.

"There is no God," he said flatly, uncompromisingly as death itself, as everyone looked at him.

"Dude, you can't say that! Quick, everybody clap your hands!"

"Yeah, man, that's an awfully big conclusion to jump to."

"It's also working under the misassumption of a necessarily monotheistic theology. Faith encompasses more possibilities than that."

"I have faith in you guys," Robin insisted stubbornly. "That's all I need."

"Is that very different from the woman I saved yesterday having faith in us?" Starfire asked, feeling that she was once again having difficulty keeping up with the conversation. The silence was like that of a library, only more so, as everyone looked at everyone else and couldn't think of a response to that. Starfire beamed a bit, feeling that she'd done very well for herself, considering the near total ignorance of Earth theology she was operating under. "And _I_, dear friends, worship many gods and goddesses of my people, foremost among them X'Hal, the Tamaranian Bringer of Victory in Battle." Everyone else nodded vaguely, not looking very surprised. "I would love to share with you all my feelings on faith later, but for now I feel it is crucial that we learn more of what this woman who thinks I am an angel believes. Let us go to her place of worship and allow her to share her feelings with us. Then we may reach a peaceful accord with as little damage done to Earth society or the Titans as possible. Is that agreeable with you all?"

"Starfire," Cyborg asked carefully, his fleshly eye narrowing, "you're not askin' us to..."

"Titans," she said firmly, using the voice Robin would have used, "we must go to church!"

"Oh God," Robin moaned, clutching his face.

"Exactly," said Raven.


	2. Chapter 2

2

Starfire was ready to go to church the very next day, but the reality of the situation took a bit more preparation than that. For one thing, the other Titans explained to Starfire that the most productive day to go to church would be on Sunday, as that would be when the most people were there and when the service was most conventional. Then came the procurement of formal clothing. Cyborg and Robin both had suits, albeit ones that requiring thorough cleaning and ironing. Beast Boy, Starfire, and Raven, however, had zilch. Nothing. Nada. In fact, Raven and Starfire in particular didn't even have hardly anything other than their team uniforms... and there was no way whatsoever that they were letting Beast Boy go to church in a t-shirt and jeans.

The resulting mandatory shopping trip was challenging at best. Cyborg and Robin found it difficult to bully Beast Boy into trying on a set of clothes in a timely fashion, and found it even more difficult to find formal pants and shirts that didn't show up green strands of shed fur. Black and white were absolutely out. That left Beast Boy's other primary choices as brown and gray (after having been beaten off of a purple dress coat once Cyborg said it made him look like a pimp). Eventually a short-sleeved gray knitted shirt, gray slacks, brown leather shoes, and a brown overcoat were settled on. Finding a small enough belt (fake leather, at Beast Boy's utter insistence), shoes, and a tie then became the finishing touches. Eventually they ditched the tie; Beast Boy wanted a snap on bow tie, come hell or high water, and eventually the other two figured that even no tie was preferable to that. When the boys reached the checkout counter, they realized they hadn't figured out who was going to pay for all of this fairly expensive clothing, which caused another argument. This was resolved once the small elderly Asian lady at the counter scolded them via ancient Eastern proverbs for being so worldly concerning clothes meant to express one's inner spiritual purity on the outer world. After checkout she admitted she'd made the proverbs up, and yelled at them to move, since they were holding up the line.

Raven and Starfire's shopping was accomplished with far less noise, but had its own trials and tribulations. Firstly, it took soem time for both ladies, still not entirely familiar with Earthly shopping techniques, to figure out that changing was to be done in a stall within a small easily overlooked side room. Not right out in the main store, as Starfire had first thought, and not in the side room, as Raven had thought, but in the little sections paneled off by wood. They had initially mistaken the stalls for product storage, as the wooden panels were rather ratty and didn't even cover that much space, being open both at the top and bottom. Then, after saying she didn't like several very different dresses one after the other, Raven finally admitted very lowly that she didn't like the idea of changing her clothes outside of her room, where she could lock the door. Starfire first pointed out the locks on the stalls, which did little to comfort Raven as they were flimsy at best. Then the Tamaranian offered to change with her in the same stall, assuming that the company would make Raven feel better. To her perplexement this only made Raven feel worse! Ultimately they decided to buy several dresses each, go home and try them all on at their leisure, and then return the ones they didn't want. Relying on a consultation with a cheery gray-haired store employee on the most suitable church garb, they both ended up with several variations on a very severe black theme that covered the body from neck to very modest lower thigh. Raven enjoyed the look, if not necessarily the itchiness. Starfire, though not greatly approving of being forced into such a drab hue, was focused on achieving her new goal of totally understanding Earth religion and considered it a necessary evil to be endured with dignity and a smile. However, her smile was a somewhat halfhearted one until Raven commented that the black contrasted her eyes and hair very well, a calculated move to perk her comrade up that worked as well as intended. They headed over to the men's department, satisfied in their choices... and halfway there remembered that dresses needed matching shoes, went straight back, and spent another half hour with their own gender-segregated fashion apparel.

When the clothing issue was finally resolved, that left finding the woman and her church. It wasn't difficult for Cyborg's search engine-friendly fingers to find the woman, a Mrs. Ashton. In fact, it was unpleasantly easy. In a matter of hours, her announcement of starting the Church of Starfire had had her plastered all over Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo News, and countless religious and superhero-devoted blogs. Further research indicated that she had been and yet remained a decades-long member of The Second Independent Baptist Church of Loving Fellowship, a seventy-year old entity that had drifted through several locations before settling at a suburb not too far from Jump forty years ago. According to a blog message by the woman herself, she had not yet established an actual separate Church of Starfire, but indicated that establishment was 'imminent and inevitable' and only required sufficient support from her circle of fellow believers in Second Independent.

The other major tidbit that Cyborg gathered through this cyberspace recon was the surprising thing that Mrs. Ashton truly did have a good amount of support, at least as far as the internet was concerned. Although Mrs. Ashton was the first to make a declaration of Starfire's supposed angelic nature, it was a concept that fans of the team, particularly the adolescent males, flocked towards. This, Cyborg found disturbing. But not nearly as disturbing as Robin did, who grew gradually more fuming with every comment he read, until finally even Starfire had to gently ask him to stop trying to grind his own teeth into nubs. This offered illuminating insight that none of the team was very comfortable in knowing - there was a heavy focus on Starfire's innocence, purity, and good lucks as they pertained to media depictions of angels, and an all too eager trend towards ignoring or downplaying all the little traits that made her an actual person and not just an idealized concept. Starfire herself took it all as harmless, though, a mere overreaction by people who hadn't met her and who would undoubtedly come to an amicable understanding once all parties just sat down and talked.

Robin called the church's pastor and had a brief, serious conversation, essentially asking permission to disrupt church services with the presence of celebrities behaving as meekly as possible. Pastor Whittaker was so pleased with the idea that it actually set Robin off his ease, along with the fact that the Pastor's voice sounded very... young. No matter how firmly Robin told the man that none of his team had any intentions of converting in the near future or officially endorsing any religious establishment, the Pastor apparently took the mere potential presence of the Titans in his house of worship to be wonderful publicity for Christ. It was only with great difficulty that Robin avoided getting any significant special favors in return for the deed. And it was absolutely impossible to refuse the reserved front row pew seats that Whittaker offered, so Robin took them and allowed himself to be glad that that was all he'd been made to take, hanging up with a feeling of exhaustion.

The next day was Saturday, and that left Cyborg that one day to try to avoid Starfire so he could bone up on all the little theological tidbits he'd long since forgotten. The poor half-man, half-machine hadn't cracked open a Bible in years, and badly felt the need to be a good representative of his faction, however neglectful he'd been to it over the years. And who could blame him? After all, he'd been busy. A very very busy superhero. Who also liked video games. And food. And sports. And playing pranks on/with Beast Boy. There was perhaps just the tiniest bit of guilt in his head, now that the matter had been brought up, that he hadn't made more time for the Big Guy, but whenever it got too intrusive he just thought about all the people he'd saved as a superhero, all the crime he'd stopped, and then he felt better. Surely God didn't want you to not have fun, right? Relishing your life was as much a kind of worship as passing the offering plate! Why give a man tastebuds if he wasn't meant to enjoy a delicious stack of barbecue ribs now and then? Such had always been Cyborg's way of thinking, throughout his life, and he saw no reason to change it now. But Starfire had a tendency to be... overenthusiastic, about pretty much everything. And thus he took it upon himself to be prepared.

Destiny ordained that they, like most churchgoers either temporary or habitual, would all sleep past their alarms and be twenty minutes late. Accordingly, they skipped breakfast, rushed showers, and dressed with frantic attention to detail. Several articles of clothing were put on backwards and then righted without being taken off. The back of Beast Boy's shirt was tucked in by way of telekinesis. Robin's hair was one centimeter off and he didn't even notice. They crammed into the car in more or less random order, no fighting over seats, and were off at exactly the legal speed limit once Robin reminded Cyborg that getting a ticket for driving to church would be counterproductive to their reputation.

Along the way, Starfire did indeed have many questions for Cyborg. But they weren't the ones he was ready for. In fact, they were pretty much every possible question except the ones he had been ready for.

"Why are the Christian places of worship given pointy roofing? Is it meant to suggest a dagger or sword?"

"I... I don't really know, Star," Cyborg replied, sweating a bit as he tried to switch lanes in a crowded street, failed, and ended up waiting at a red light. They didn't usually drive on Sundays unless a bad guy attacked. In which case the streets tended to clear themselves.

"Why are the church windows so colorful when windows on Earth are normally very plain? I mean no offense to your glass-blowers, of course."

"I dunno, we'll have to ask our glass-blowers, I guess."

"I do not understand, please, what is the difference between your God coming back to life and a reincarnating undead?"

"Uh... well, I'm not really sure myself, heheh..."

"Why do so many people who profess to be of the Christian faith only attend services once each week? Do they cease to be Christians the other six days?"

"Well, that's not really for me to say, Star!"

"If your God only reincarnated himself as a representative sacrificial human male, why are women allowed to be Christians? Should he not also have reincarnated and sacrificed as a woman?"

Cyborg tried to stop sweating, failed, and tugged at his suddenly too tight collar with his free hand. "Gimme a break, Star, gender politics in religion are complicated. I'm not the one to go to about stuff like that." In the rearview mirror, Raven was smirking. "But yeah, he was supposed to be a sacrifice for all people, not just guys."

"And what of Beast Boy? He is able to be many different beings you profess to be without souls."

"That just means I have MORE souls!" Beast Boy tried to argue in a huff, while Cyborg began to pray in his head for the drive to be over, please, God, please.

The discussion then shifted over to talk of communion, which Starfire had picked up some vague ideas on through Beast Boy. Raven perked up at the idea of cannibalism until Cyborg quickly explained that it was just a metaphor and that the literal items were typically crackers and wine, whereupon she began looking bored again, her fingers groping for a hood that wasn't there. Then Beast Boy began getting intrigued over the possibility of getting 'totally wasted' on communion wine, which caused Cyborg to very firmly tell him that communion was for Christians only. NO EXCEPTIONS. And also, that most Baptist churches used non-alcoholic substitutes (in case the little imp tried to sneak any).

Robin was the only one who was totally quiet. He didn't move, he barely blinked, he never said a word. It was, Cyborg thought, a little scary. At least there was nothing to be obsessive over. For a split second of pure insanity, he imagined walking inside the church and being greeted to the sight of Slade staring down at them from behind the pulpit, and bit his lip to avoid giggled in hysteria. It was just CHURCH. Why was he so worked up? Heck, the five of them had been more saintly their lives so far than most of the people in there, more than likely! Everything would be fine. It wasn't like the Big Guy was gonna punish him for not attending services more by causing Beast Boy to let out a huge fart in the middle of the sermon or something like that.

Except... now that the idea was in Cyborg's head, he couldn't stop imagining it. What flesh he had left went clammy and began to crawl.

Due to some desperate and probably mildly unsafe shortcuts on Cyborg's part, they got there without being late for the service. People were still milling outside the sprawing one-level tan brick building, walking, talking, pushing strollers and the like. To the chagrin of the entire team, the Titans noticed that they were more formally dressed than everyone else; the norm appeared to be knitted shirts in the color of the local sports team, and jeans. The latter particularly outraged Beast Boy.

"I TOLD you," he hissed at the other two boys in vindicated fury. "See? See what everyone else's wearing? I TOLD you, but NOOOOooo, you said-"

"Lower your voice," Robin said, very softly and grimly. It was his battle tone. So engrained into their consciousnesses was that tone that all four immediately straightened up and shut their mouths, awaiting their leader's orders. "We're more than just teenagers right now. We're representatives of the superhero community to the religious community. I expect everyone to be on their best behavior. You don't have to agree with everything said in the service. You don't have to like everyone you meet. But you do have to PRETEND to." Starfire's brow wrinkled. She started to open her mouth, then closed it silently after seeing the look on the Boy Wonder's face. "Starfire, you know why they'll make a big deal of you. Don't encourage it. Raven, people will probably react badly about your chakra. Don't let it ruffle you. Beast Boy, if you change into anything, so help me by the God I don't believe in I will make you pay for it when we get back home. Cyborg-"

"I know how to behave in a church, man," Cyborg interrupted icily with a level stare.

Robin coughed, suddenly seeming to realize how harsh he'd sounded, showing some contrition. "Right. Sorry. Guys, I don't mean to sound like I expect you to cause trouble, it's just..."

"Showing the proper deference to faith is important," Starfire said with surprising calm insight.

Robin started to say something, stopped himself, then started again. "Y-yeah. Yeah. That's right." He nodded awkwardly. "Remember, be careful not to stare at Mrs. Ashton if you see her, or argue with her if she comes up to you. We're just going to church. Like everyone else."

And so they got out of the car and started walking towards the building. Like everyone else.

However, by that time everyone else had noticed that the Titans were here, causing the sort of cheerful mobbing that was usually associated with impromptu press conferences during the aftermaths of battles. The warm, not as noisy as usual clustering of bodies necessitated some obligatory handshakes and waves just to get the room to keep on moving forward through the press of excited indviduals, step by step. Responses were as few and noncommital as possible. Raven kept trying to pull up a hood that she didn't have. Beast Boy and Cyborg both grinned, the former enthusiastically, the latter a bit bashfully. Starfire refrained from floating, her attention equally divided between balancing on heeled shoes and trying to appear friendly to the very many people who were reacting to her with varying degrees of respect, admiration, ogling, and outright adulation.

Robin just walked, acknowledging people with well-oiled and passionless motions, his smile as sharp as the slits of his eyes behind his mask.


	3. Chapter 3

3

"They have donuts? Why didn't anyone tell me they had donuts?"

Robin sighed and stepped to one side to allow Beast Boy to beeline for the boxes of Dunkin's, trusting (perhaps unwisely) that the shapeshifter's common sense would keep him from making a pig of himself. Cyborg followed in short order, which left Robin with the ladies, who definitely needed... tending to, in this environment. People were starting to calm down, at least; the interior sheltered the team from direct view, encouraging people to go out about their business. And the service looked near ready to start. With a consistency fit for migrating herds, people were flowing through the hallways towards the enormous main foyer. He was about ready to pull the other boys from their gorging when he saw the coffee next to the donuts, and allowed himself a brief delay to grab a nice black cup, sighing as he sipped down the scalding beverage.

A slightly wrinkled man with a broad frame, one of the few people in a formal outfit like Robin himself, walked up with an air of business-like friendliness. "Excuse me, would you be the Titans?"

"That's us," Robin replied, stepping forward to shake his hand.

"I'm a greeter here. The Pastor thought you guys might like someone to help you to your seats. And, ah, ward off the overly enthusiastic fans," he added with a laugh.

Robin had meant to laugh too, just to be polite, he really had. But all he could manage in the discomfort of this building, so much the antithesis of the uncompromisingly analytical lens he saw the world through, was a polite smile. He hated being here. He hated the coffee and the donuts. He hated the soft, meek tan carpet, the gentle lighting that put people at ease, the pastel flowers and vines on the egg-white walls. All traps. And he would probably hate the service even more, but it was his job to pretend otherwise, so he kept the smile up.

He got the team back together and they politely followed their greeter guide in a swaying, uneven line as the man cheerfully but firmly kept the remaining few pestering fans at a polite distance. The foyer's sheer space engulfed them, making Robin's teeth tighten against each other. It was all cheap psychological manipulation, meant to impress upon people the grandeur and majesty of a figment of their imaginations. Bah! Who could believe in a God that let monsters like the Joker and Slade run loose, causing havoc and harming innocent people? There wasn't a God, of course. It was so obvious. The fact that there wasn't was why the world needed heroes. Robin had no idea why everyone else didn't see this incredibly simple and blatant fact.

Other than Beast Boy grinning and waving a little too long at a few girls in skirts, there were no real problems on the way through the main worship room. Even Cyborg didn't make a sound with his feet as they all plodded through the extra-thick carpet, but he grinned and bobbed his head and looked almost like he was at home, if a home he hadn't visited in a long while. Raven, meanwhile, more or less shrunk into herself, eyes settling on the black and brown horizontal grain of the wooden pews, on the bronze light fixtures, on anything except the people who were now trying to stare, point and whisper without being too obvious and doing a bad job of it. Raven wasn't the one Robin was worried about, though. He knew she would behave unless seriously provoked, and the sheep would follow the shepherd when it came to a lack of Satanic-slash-gothic-slash-vampire-New Age-slash-whatever accusations. Starfire was the true wild card, lacking even Beast Boy's basic understanding of How To Behave In Church. She appeared to be getting along so far by imitating those around her with an extra layer of her natural bubbly amiability, though, which he saw with relief was so far working just fine. No one was worshiping her yet. There were a lot more points in her direction, and a lot more eyes directed at her, but things weren't going crazy. And that was really all Robin wanted out of religious people. For them to not be crazy. It was a simple enough wish, but one he still felt scared to hope for.

They were, indeed, right in the front, in their very own aisle roped off by red velvet. Of course, the pulpit was substantially elevated. All the better for the preacher to look down on his congregation, Robin thought to himself sourly, his face still a a second mildly friendly mask behind the first one. But this was no time to be basting in his own resentments. No, he had to keep an eye out for Ashton. Surveying the pews behind them under the pretense of taking in the architecture, he saw that the woman was nowhere to be seen on the ground level. That was probably for the best. An encounter was probably inevitable, but delaying it until after the service when people would be busy going home would be best. The balcony level harder to make out, but there weren't many of the sorts of dresses Ms. Ashton seemed to prefer as far as he could tell. He held back from getting out his binoculars, as much as he wanted to. Too conspicuous. On the other hand, perhaps Cyborg could zoom in without being noticed...

"Cyborg," he murmured quietly, trying to lean over Beast Boy. "Try to maintain proper posture, will you?" he added at Beast Boy, who had sighed irritably and sunk down like a spineless thing.

"Well, I can't do that if you're leaning over me," he snapped back.

The service was about to start! There wasn't much time now! "Sorry, sorry, just... Cy, can you use your-" No, it was too late, he'd just have to assume Ashton wasn't up there. "Forget it, actually." He sat back and tried to look calm again while the other two stared at him briefly, then shrugged.

The seats were, though he hated to admit it, very comfortable. A lot better than the usual pews. Even the backs were padded. Of course, all that meant, he reminded himself, was that Second Independent had done a good job taking money from people by means of emotional manipulation. At least some of that money was going into practical things to make people relaxed, though, instead of being entirely wasted on the needlessly overblown architecture. As the service began, Robin had his suspicions confirmed that Whittaker was indeed barely much older than he himself! Brown-eyed, blond, and annoyingly friendly. Probably just out of college. He wondered how the man had managed to get such a high position in a church this successful. But then, churches were largely ruled by social favors. Likely Whittaker knew someone or was related to someone. For an opener, the congregation was asked to sing along from the printed service handouts. Initially Robin just wondered how much donation money it cost to print the things out every week, but then he realized with panic that they'd walked right by the stacks of handouts coming in and hadn't gotten any! Of course they had, the man had been leading them, why hadn't he given them handouts? Now they would look disrespectful for not singing the stupid...

Oh, wait, there were handouts in their pew. He'd been sitting on his. He let out a sigh of relief and opened it up, blinking when he saw it was customized, with his name printed on it and little (intended to be) mildly humorous footnotes addressed to him personally. The pastor really was pulling out all the stops to win them over, huh. He wasn't falling for it, though! His parents were dead, there was no God, end of story.

The opening hymn was mercifully short. It wasn't one that Robin was familiar with, but that didn't mean much as he barely knew any. It was very generic, all about peace and fellowship under a loving God. Yeah, Robin knew that was how it all started. And then later on came the 'God wants you to picket homosexuals' funerals and bomb abortion clinics' stuff. His biggest worry was that Starfire would have disregarded his very specific instructions on moderating her tone and volume during the singing, but she was very well-behaved, even subdued, while her smile remained as bright and beautiful as ever. He wondered, not for the first time, why it was that he found the curves of her body so much more enticing in that modest puritan dress when he'd seen her in far, far less on a regular basis for years. Raven was, of course, barely audible. Beast Boy, apparently, had decided that enthusiasm even in a religious song was better than singing with boredom, so his unskilled but cheery voice had a clear presence that made Robin proud despite himself. And of course Cyborg was the star of the show, as it were, apparently familiar with the hymn itself as well as having not only the enthusiasm for it, but the innate bare modicum of talent and the sense of appropriate word stresses and pauses to really do the song justice. One verse, and then they were seated again.

He forced himself to really listen through the initial announcements and news, but it was all a dull waste. Just mentions of donation milestones for missionary groups, of church supper night, of schedules for minor charitable activities. There was, very noticeably, absolutely zero comment on the Titans or Ms. Ashton's newfound ambitions. The complete lack of attention was so conspicuous that during this segment of the service Robin noticed more than a few people looking pointedly in their direction and murmuring to their seatmates, and he couldn't blame them. It was obvious the pastor wanted them to feel at home, and was doing that by trying to make them as comfortable as possible. Even Whittaker's brown eyes kept moving normally instead of focusing on the Titans. Robin considered himself a fairly adept reader of expressions, and he was impressed with Whittaker's self-control. It might have been any other service on any other day with any other congregation, except for the special printouts. Starfire was particularly attentive, and that was probably unavoidable, but still, he worried that she would be impressionable to the manipulative ways of the church. On the other hand, she apparently already had her own religion (was that why she had all those weird holidays, or were they separate things? He made a mental note to ask her), and hopefully wasn't in danger of converting.

A few more, irritatingly longer songs. There wasn't much surveying he could do during them without drawing attention, and Beast Boy quickly grew impatient with anything that had significant repetition. Which was basically every hymn ever. So Robin was very grateful when the time came for the sermon. Beast Boy could go to freaking sleep if he wanted, the only one who'd know would be Whittaker. Sitting at front had advantages after all.

"And now I'd like to talk a bit today about what makes a hero," Whittaker opened up, and Robin stiffened as the proverbial hammer dropped down, the multiplied cloth rustle of practically the entire congregation sitting up and paying extra-close attention loud in his ears. So this was it. There went all the inconspicuousness. Whittaker was going to turn the Titans into his own personal message, wasn't he? Robin could only hope it wasn't something that the Titans would have to officially object to. There was going to be enough of an unavoidable scene with Ashton as it was.

The introductory ramble was predictable enough. Pointing out the ills of the media for giving people false impressions of heroism, and the tendency of people to value flash and style over substance and results. After ten minutes of that, though, Whittaker launched into the meat of his message with enthusiastic hand gestures and very little looking down at notes. That was when thinks got moderately interesting for the four out of five Titans with the attention spans to actually pay attention (Robin forgave Beast Boy, who was still awake and at least pretending to listen, which was frankly better than Robin had expected of the changeling).

"But we were each made the way we were for a reason, and each given gifts to help make the world a better place. James says that every good gift comes from above, and he's not just talking about the really special, interesting ones we'd all love to have! We can't all be rich. We can't all be famous. We can't all be what we want to be or do what we want to do. But we can all be who we were MEANT to be, and do what we were MEANT to do. If you can learn second languages easily, you have an incredible gift, the gift of communicating with people around the world. If you're patient with children and enjoy their company, then you have the gift of helping them grow up, of forming their little lives into happy and productive ones. Even if your gift is just the ability to care and do your best at wherever you're at, it's still a gift. Are you working computer tech support? Pretty miserable job, isn't it? People call you only when they're angry and frustrated. But you have the power to make their lives a little better, and maybe even the power to save money and precious information, just by doing your best at your job and helping people out without getting mad right back at them. Yes, God gave us the apostles and the prophets, but he also gave us those who speak in second tongues, those who teach, and those who use their time for the benefit of others."

"If I had to sum it up, I'd put it like this: as long as we're doing what God meant us to do, we're each heroes in our own way. 'Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.' And on that note, I'd like to close us in a few minutes of prayer."

Robin kept his eyes open just long enough to make sure the girls and Beast Boy were behaving appropriately. Although, since it was a prayer, he supposed there was no harm in them messing up with everyone else's eyes closed. Nonetheless each Titan bowed his or her head in imitation of those around them, and shut their eyes. Robin did so last, sighing in relief. He didn't listen to the ritualized words, considering them utterly meaningless and probably just a recap of the sermon in brief anyway. The formulaic part was almost over. Now that they'd given in to Star's whims, they could get to the real meat of the mission, and find a place to chat with Ms. Ashton in private. Perhaps Whittaker could help with that, if he had a spare moment. Whittaker didn't look like the kind of person who'd be too busy to provide assistance, but Robin didn't want to have to draw attention, either. Perhaps he should just have everyone split up and mingle for a while till they spotted the woman...

No need for plans at the moment, actually. As the service was breaking up with the generic bustling and murmuring of the well-behaved crowd, Whittaker was stepping off the platform to approach them, one hand stretched out. Robin stood up and shook.

"Thank you for being here today. I know these may not be the circumstances either of us would have asked for, but I can't help but feeling it a blessing from the Lord anyway."

Robin's grin went a bit snarl-ish before he managed to tame it back from its ricture of distaste. "Thank you for having us. The individualized printouts were a nice touch. Do you have a place we could speak privately for a second? We won't take much of your time."

"Sure thing! Right this way." Whittaker hooked a thumb over to a small, well-concealed door to one side of the platform, and the Titans followed.

There weren't enough chairs in Whittaker's small, knickknack-cluttered office for all of them, so they all stood, Whittaker leaning against his desk casually.

"So, about Ms. Ashton..."

"I'd just like to start out by saying, I'd stop her if I could. I know this has got to be a lot of trouble for you kids. But it's really out of my hands."

Robin raised an eyebrow. "She has more influence than you in the congregation?"

"Well... not exactly. It's more like an even split," Whittaker explained with a wry smile. "She's very involved with the suppers and soup kitchen work, and she's been working alongside many of the older members for many years now. I've only been pastor for a year and a half, and right now I'm considered a bit too liberal for the more conservative members. I was lucky to get the position, honestly. A lot of the younger members are with me on most issues, but I can't push around the more, err, seasoned folks." Starfire wrinkled her brow, opened her mouth, then closed it with a little smiling blush as Cyborg hastily whispered an explanation of the turn of phrase into her ear. "I don't think Elizabeth will have the clout to make a truly independent, long-lasting church. But she might make a pretty big wave for a while. A fad, if we can so demean it by calling it that. Err, I AM assuming that miss Starfire is not an angel, of course. Apologies if I'm mistaken." The friendly grin he directed towards the Tamaranian made Robin's fingers twitch with the held back desire to strangle. That man had BETTER not be flirting with her!

"I do not believe this is the case," Starfire replied humbly with a return smile. "Inquiries with Cyborg and the Wikipedia have indicated that the angel is a being defined primarily as being a messenger from your God. While I may not be from this wonderful planet, I do not believe I have been sent by your God or been directed by Him any more than any other person."

"I thought so," Whittaker said back with a chuckle. "Maybe you'll have a little more luck speaking with Ms. Ashton directly, if you feel up to it."

"Absolutely. No offense, but we need to nip this in the bud, pastor," Robin said firmly.

"Alright, then! Elizabeth helps with the nurseries during this service. I'll take you to them and you guys can talk it all out once the babies are finished being cleared out."

Starfire perked up. "Babies?"

At the same time, Raven... perked down. "Babies," she muttered. Robin was amused. He knew she'd developed an attachment to Melvin and company, but that had apparently taken some time. And she had started to get possessive of them to the point of considering all other infants slightly inferior.

Navigating the church was much easier with the pastor at the head of their little line. People were careful to get out of their way, although there were brief frequent stops for teenagers to high five and college-age members to make a variety of gestures of acknowledgment. Back to the hallways and their pastel greenery, and into a section that smelled faintly of what most nurseries smelled like - cleaning products, baby powder, unwashed baby flesh, and poo. All mingled together to create that inimitable scent of Baby. Robin grimaced, seeing Starfire clap her hands and look absolutely delighted. He REALLY hoped she wasn't getting any ideas.

Ms. Ashton was one of four ladies dressed very similarly to her, long ruffled dresses with baby blue smocks draped atop. They cooed at the babies and paid them a great deal of attention as the infants were passed one by one to patient parents awaiting their alternately squalling or giggly little ones. Relatively little attention was paid to the adults until one of the women noticed Starfire, eyes widening. Whispering went around the room like the happiest of thrown knives. Robin took a deep breath. They could handle this. It was just a few out of touch middle-aged women who'd been too impressed by brushing contact with an alien superhero. This would be resolved simply and easily.

It didn't help that he kept getting the urge to pray to a God he didn't believe in. The closest he came was visualizing the sharp white slits of Batman's gaze glaring down at him in admonishment from a red stormcloud-filled sky.

Robin paused, considering. There was no way he was going to get a genuine reaction to whatever he said from Elizabeth Ashton so long as Starfire was here. For that matter, having a bunch of people around at all was probably a bad idea. What he was going to say was harsh and therefire needed to be discreet. He should have thought of this earlier and cursed himself for the lack of planning.

"You know what, guys, I'll let you go finish up the donuts and coffee. Get to know people. I think it's best if I speak with Ms. Ashton alone."

Cyborg and Beast Boy were only too happy to oblige. The girls, however, had other ideas.

"Are you sure you want to deal with this without any backup?" Raven asked warily, while Starfire just did a suspicious little glare that made her mini eyebrows scrunch up very cutely, preventing Robin from being intimidated.

"It'll be fine." He more or less shooed them in the other direction, which was easier to do right now given that they were trying not to use their powers. Starfire could have flicked him twenty feet with a finger if she really wanted to. "Make sure Beast Boy's staying out of trouble. Star, I promise I'll explain everything on the ride home, alright?"

"Very well, Robin. If that is what you think best as our leader. But... be not unkind to her, or I will refrain from forgetting it." She walked off with her chin tilted a bit up and eyes mostly closed, always a bad sign. He was gonna pay for this later. But later would come later. Handling right now was the important thing.

Always was, Robin thought, his mask feeling heavy on his face.


	4. Chapter 4

4

It took far too long, even with the pastor's diplomatic aid, to get the woman alone. Even after her duties as baby caretaker were long since finished, she insisted on chatting at length and loudly with everyone in earshot till Robin's teeth wanted to grind. Hadn't the woman ever heard of promptness? Of wasting people's time? He was a very important hero with very important things to do, and here she was going on and on about tomorrow's supper night plans and Bible study group! The lingering smell of the nursery made him ill, too. But there wasn't nothing to do but lean against the pink flowers and tap his foot increasingly more obviously and hope she took the hint.

She didn't.

Only when practically everyone else had cleared out was Ms. Ashton finally ready to offer some of her time to them, Whittaker excusing himself politely on request. Expecting condescension or smugness for having succeeded in annoying him in such a petty way, Robin was surprised when she only smiled at him and offered to grab a pitcher of tea from the kitchen for them to sip at while they chatted. Feeling that he needed to impose upon her the urgency of the situation she'd stirred up, as well as the value of his time, he firmly refused her increasingly diverse offers of generosity one by one until she was left with no functionally polite option but to talk with him, right now, about exactly what he'd come for and nothing else. This took about five minutes longer than it would have taken with any other human being.

"Oh, alright, I see you're a straight to the point kind of boy. You have plenty of strange mutant robot things to fight, I'm sure. I assume you're here to offer your support to the upcoming Church of Starfire? It always helps to keep these things coordinated! We're still in the planning stages, but Amanda's husband, Amanda was the one in the blue dress, he's an architect, you see, and he's already offering his services free of charge-"

Robin held up a hand, expecting her to come to a halt, and stared in frank disbelief as she simply ignored the hand and kept on talking. About how they really didn't need much financial assistance at all, surprisingly, what with all the husbands of ladies she knew who were contracted, licensed carpenters or electricians and so on. About the surprising amount of support they'd gathered from a project not even a week old yet. About how she had a nephew using all the latest gadgets, like 'Tweeter,' to keep the world at large well-informed on the planning stages of the prospective new church, its values, and its potential membership in the Southern Baptist Convention despite being in a liberal-heavy locale quite far from the Bible Belt.

He grew increasingly horrified with every passing moment, with every word that came out of her mouth. This was a grass roots, blue collar, popular support charity project that would in fact look like a great news story and likely would increase cash flow and attention to the original foundation church as well as the supposed upcoming one. And with her entire life thoroughly seated in the atmosphere of the church, her whole smiling, verbosely enthusiastic, plastic pearl necklaced being completely accustomed to tugging on the strings of religious society to get things done, Ms. Ashton looked like she could actually accomplish it. She knew how to get things done. It was a terrible realization for him. Instead of being hopelessly incompetent, as Robin was only now realizing he'd subconsciously expectd, she actually knew that she needed experts in various fields, and could at best serve as a motivating figurehead. And she was the kind of person who was very EFFECTIVE at being a motivating figurehead! It took a leader to know a leader. He knew a great motivational speaker, a great organizer, a great MANIPULATOR when he saw one. It was over every inch of her, right down to the modest stockings and the shiny black high heels she had absolutely no trouble walking in.

Faced with an unstoppable object, Robin did as was his wont, mentally shrugging and throwing himself in its path. "I think you're operating under several major misconceptions, Ms. Ashton," he finally managed to break in after multiple failed attempts at interrupting. "I admire and respect the work you've put into all this, but as much as we all love Starfire, she doesn't need or want a church. She's not an angel. She's a Tamaranian, an alien humanoid. She's certainly not Christian! Her native religion is polytheistic."

"Oh, sweetheart, God has many names," Ms. Ashton condescended so affectionately that Robin almost enjoyed it by reflex before bristling. What a horrible woman. "And shows Himself in a multitude of ways. Of course we all know she's an alien! If we're calling anything that comes down from the sky an alien, then angels are too. I know this must all seem very spontaneous to you, but the truth is that it's something I and my friends in Christ have talked about for a long time. Only just recently did the Lord place her in my path so I could finally have the courage to share my revelation with the world. Isn't it so obvious, once you admit it? She has the strength to lay waste to cities, the righteousness to win all battles, the incorruptible and inviolate spirit of a truly holy being, the airborne grace of an eagle with God's own wind beneath its wings-"

"Raven can fly too, why don't you worship her?" he snapped irritably. He almost threw in a bit about her father too, but his common sense tackled his annoyance and held it down till the mad urge passed. He did NOT need to deal with a schizophrenic church that simultaneously worshiped Starfire while denouncing Raven as demonic. Plus, Raven would have killed him, and he was perfectly happy with Beast Boy being her default target dummy.

"Christians don't worship angels, honey. Only God is worthy of worship. Angels are messengers of that which is good and just. Don't you think that she's such a being? Isn't every word from her mouth concerned with helping others and caring for other people, even if the name of the loving God she uses happens to have different letters in it?"

This was getting increasingly personal. He knew it was a mistake, but he couldn't help but get angry. Why did she have to be so stupidly NICE about it? Why couldn't she be evil like everything else he had to fight? "You have no right to talk like you know her! I'm her boyfriend, and I'm her leader, and I'm her teammate, and it's taken me YEARS to understand even a portion of who she is and just how beautiful and wonderful she is! But she's a PERSON, not a religious concept, and you don't have the right to use her to prop up your doddering old antiquated barbaric belief system based on a hippie who was nailed to a piece of wood!"

Oops. Okay, that had probably been a bit too much. In fact, he KNEW it had been a bit too much, because out of the corner of his eye, way down the hallway, he saw his teammates peeking out from behind a corner with attempted stealth, Whittaker's head a fifth atop all the rest, barely poking over Cyborg's. As soon as his head twitched in their direction they vanished in perfect sync.

She seemed, if anything, vindicated by his hostility. "A prophet is never respected in his home town," she told him like teaching a child a simple math lesson. "You're too close to her to see her true nature, Robin. We all, of course, appreciate what the Titans as a whole have done for the city, but only Starfire has exhibited the kind of saintly behavior only those touched by God can show. Of course, as her boyfriend, you can't help but be a little selfish, and I'm sure no one will blame you for that. But you have to learn to share her goodness with a struggling world that badly needs her compassion and righteousness."

He deliberately took a moment to breathe, actually practicing a quick mental meditational technique he'd scavenged from Raven. The bubbling anger was pushed back down. There. All better. Had to approach this logically, rationally, no matter how irrational she was being. Ms. Ashton was unexpectedly troublesome but he wouldn't let her have her incredibly destructive and misguided way no matter how much she wanted it. Who knew what else this could snowball into, if left alone? Things always got out of control with religion.

"Clearly what I say doesn't matter to you. What if Starfire told you that you were mistaken, then?"

"Oh, I don't think it's really necessary to KNOW that you're an angel to actually be one, do you? Of course she's humble, as would be any servant of the Lord. She wouldn't ever ask for someone to make a church for her. But I don't think she would ever deny anyone the right to do so, either."

"Let's put that to the test," he said with an 'I'm game' grin, looking back over at the still unoccupied hall corner. "Starfire, could you come over here for a second, please, and tell Ms. Ashton making a church for you is silly?"

Starfire walked a few steps, grumbled at her heels in Tamaranian, and gave up, floating half a foot above the carpet the rest of the way. Ms. Ashton's eyes were about as wide as they could get, the woman's face pure rapture. Robin relaxed, all the tension going out. Star had had the right idea, maybe, in coming here today. She could put a stop to all this madness herself. She was a special girl and a special comrade and a special hero, but she wasn't an angel, no matter what melodramatic song lyrics might say.

"I am sorry, Robin," she told him with genuine regret. "I must refuse."

Robin did not, in fact, have Raven's emotions-fueled telekinesis, but despite this, he could swear he heard glass shattering. "What," he said so flatly that it was barely a question, robotic in his dumbfoundment.

"I do not agree with what Ms. Ashton is doing," she acknowledged with a somewhat regal nod of her head, "however, I feel that I must acknowledge her right to do it. I have lived a long time now in this land of the free and the brave, and I have come to understand that you all value highly the virtue of freedom of expression of beliefs. I do not wish to go against the founding principles of this country. Nor do I desire to meddle as an outsider in the affairs of a religion that is still strange and foreign to me! Their God of love does not sound very unpleasant, even if I do not like how He looks hanging from two bisecting wooden beams! I will not support Ms. Ashton's conclusion that I am an angel. But if she does not wish to alter her opinion, then neither will I abuse my position in her faith to force her into doing that which she does not wish to do! Would that not truly be a thing of great hypocrisy, to use my status as an angel to command her to refrain from acknowledging me as such a being? Let us extend to her the same courtesy and respect that this wonderful planet and wonderful country have extended to us, and offer her even the freedom to make mistakes that are her own."

She had never seemed more beautiful to him than now, floating there with absolute, slightly sad certainty, in that rather awful and itchy-looking black dress.

He had never in his life wanted to just punch her solidly in the face than he did right now.

Batman would find out, and laugh at him for being so whipped.

He WAS whipped. He couldn't say no to her. Even with such high stakes, he just looked at her, and... he melted.

Dammit, Catwoman never did this to Batman!

"I..." He paused, not knowing what he could possibly say in the face of two women who ultimately had him bested at least twice over, if not more, in the battle of wills. "I'm going to take my bike home," he finished in defeat, somewhere between bitter and meek. He glared at Ms. Ashton. "Be careful how you handle this, Ms. Ashton. If you do anything to tarnish the reputation of the Titans or Starfire, you'll have me to deal with. Understand?"

"Oh, boys are so adorable when they're trying to be scary and protect the people they love!" She pinched his cheek, cooing, while he stood there in blushing shock. Somewhere behind him, Cyborg and Beast Boy were snickering. He hated this woman with all his heart and all his (nonexistent because he didn't believe in such superstitions) soul. "Don't worry, Robin. We won't get in the way of your little crime-fighting adventures."

"My... LITTLE..." He choked to a stop in sheer fury. Azarath, metrion, zinthos. He had no idea if Raven forcibly slammed the calm into his mind or if he did it himself, but either way, it happened. "Goodbye, Ms. Ashton." He turned to Starfire. "We are going to have a very long talk about this when we get home, Star."

"I look forward to the debate," she replied with a hungry tigress of a smile that made him nervous. Even her eyes seemed to gleam. He remembered that any long talk was one he was at least as likely to lose as win.

Calling his motorcycle up from the T-Car's trunk by remote, he rode fast and angrily, but in circles several times so that he had extra time to himself. It didn't help. He still couldn't understand why Starfire was being so irrational about a big problem that she could put a stop to in an instant. He couldn't understand why Ms. Ashton thought Starfire was an angel to start with. As always, he thought glumly, anything involving religion was a mystery to him. Transparently stupid, yet it had the power to make perfectly sane, smart people like Starfire do utterly crazy things. Why?

It did occur to him that maybe if he paid a little more attention to what HER faith was and was in, perhaps he would have been less surprised by her decision.


	5. Chapter 5

5

Cyborg was the unlucky one to answer the doorbell the next morning.

"Ummm. Are you sure you have the right address?" he asked, fearfully hoping for an answer he knew he wasn't going to get. The delivery man stared back at him levelly, and Cyborg sighed. "Right. Just, just had to ask, man."

"Yeah, I know how it is. All those admirers sending crazy things... anyway, sign here, and here." Scribble scribble. "Thanks. Enjoy your, heh, gift," the delivery man added with a chuckle, leaving Cyborg to glare at his retreating brown shirted back.

The half-man half-machine paused to really take it all in and get over the emotional threshold of grudging acceptance, then finally let out a sigh.

"STARFIRE!"

The Tamaranian floated up behind him. A bit more slowly and cautiously than usual, either due to recent tribulations or simply due to the fact that Cyborg sometimes accidentally sounded scary when he was being loud even when he didn't mean to. "Yes, Cyborg?"

"When we were talking with Ms. Ashton after Rob left yesterday, did you happen to mention that you liked mustard?"

"I believe the subject was spoken of for a brief period of time. Why do you ask?"

Cyborg stepped to one side, and pointed.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Several floors away, Beast Boy swore and clutched at his ears.

Starfire flew into the midst of the towering pillars of endless mustard containers, and tried to hug them all at once. Your standard Heinz yellow. Spicy brown mustard. Dijon style mustard. Beer-based mustard. Whole-grain mustard. Mustard sweetened with brown sugar, regular sugar, or maple. Honey mustard. High-brow brands of mustard with chunks of fruit. Mustards with fennel, dill, garlic, lemon, tomato, or basil. Hot pepper mustard. Mustard with horseradish. Mustards from Poland, Russia, Austria, Sweden. It was an enormous multi-tiered monument to brown and yellow condiments. Cyborg hadn't even known that many kinds of mustard existed. Some of them looked pretty good, too.

He felt really bad about what he was gonna have to do, wishing Rob were here to be the bad guy instead.

"Starfire, don't open those," he told her even as her fingers were posed like daggers to plunge in to the nearest pillar. "Don't you realize what this is?"

"This is a WONDERFUL present from a misguided but well-meaning friend, clearly," she replied with a vicious green glow in her eyes, practically drooling. "Do not fear, friend Cyborg, I will share the delicious mustard. After I have tried one bottle. Or two. Or possibly twenty."

"That's _dirty_ mustard! Don't eat the dirty mustard, Star! It's a just bribe!"

Her eye-glow dimmed. "Oh..." Her feet touched the ground in disconsolation. "Does that mean we must hurt our new friend's feelings by refusing this undoubtedly costly present? All the green paper money will become wasted, as well as the tangy condiment!" She had learned, at some point, that mustard wasn't really a drink. It hadn't stopped her from continuing to treat it like one, though.

"Look, we'll talk to the grocery store or wherever she got this stuff, and we'll work things out. We can get Ms. Ashton her money back, and the mustard can go to store shelves where it belongs. No one'll get hurt. But if you accept this, it'll hurt you, in the long run. Trust me." He laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Okay?"

"Very well," she grumbled, kicking at the dirt and shrugging his hand off. "I am not a child, as you are well aware."

"Oh, I know, Star, I know. Maybe later we can go to the store and get you some of your own mustard though."

Her head lifted up a bit, body going an inch into the air with it. "Truly?"

"Yeah. And we can even find some of these hoity toity fancy brands, the ones with the spices and the herbs and stuff. How's that sound?"

"That does sound most delightful!" She beamed at him, back to her usual good cheer, eyes emeralds again.

He let out a little whew of relief. That was that crisis over and done with. Now he just had to get rid of all this stuff. Ideally before Robin saw it and had a heart attack. Again. Unfortunately he wasn't nearly finished with the T-Crane, but maybe he could jury rig the car to...

Then he saw that there was a few feet at the base of one yellow pile devoted to mustard 'specially formulated for grilled beef.' Unable to stop himself, he walked over to it, mouth slightly open. His good eye glazed over the more he read from the label, which was okay because his mechanical one retained crystal clarity. It was a brand new Jack Daniel's off brand, 'Manly Grillin' Mustard.' Horseradish. Bacon. Bourbon. Paprika. Worcestershire sauce. Soy sauce. Garlic and onion. Half the ingredients had the word 'hickory smoked' in them, whether it was a natural fit or not. The bottles had five golden stars all in a row on each label, and below the stars was a caption:

'Officially endorsed by Aaron McCargo Junior.'

Tears of joy formed in his eyes as he unconsciously reached towards the mustard.

"Cyborg," Starfire said from behind him, her voice one of motherly foreboding.

"_It says you'll never want to use barbecue sauce again, Star,_" he whispered, feeling himself to be in the presence of the divine.

"Friend Cyborg."

"It's imported! They don't even SELL it in this state!"

"Friend Cyborg, do not eat the dirty mustard."

"I know," he whimpered in agony. "I knowwwww! Just... just let me pretend for a lil while, Star..." He fell to the ground on his knees, clutching the packaging that dare not be opened in vain supplication.

Then Beast Boy got involved after coming down to see what all the fuss was about. After that it was pretty much inevitable that they would build a mustard fort, which Cyborg considered the easiest way to keep Beast Boy out of trouble while he went to have a talk with Rob. After the fourth mustard avalanche, though, he figured it was best that he take charge of engineering and architecture personally, if only to keep the goods undamaged for safe return. He ended up building a small castle that was the pride of his eye, if he did say so himself. And he did! Parapets, spy holes, battlements, arched windows, and flag poles, all of mustard. With, of course, Aaron McCargo Junior's own in a place of honor, forming the throne of the throne room. Not bad for a mere hour's work, if he did say so himself. It helped when you had intelligent (or semi-intelligent, anyway, haw) livestock and super-strong flying aliens to lend a paw, hoof or hand. He was more than a little surprised that Raven hadn't come out to berate them yet. Only later would he learn that she was busy trying to persuade Robin that bribing the head of the Ayn Rand Institute into doing house calls was counterproductive.

While Beast Boy preoccupied himself sitting as a pigeon on a mustard statue of Superman in the mustard courtyard, Cyborg and Starfire found themselves together in the eastern outer ward mustard tower's spiral mustard staircase. He started to explain to her how human architecture, like spirals stairs, had evolved from various historical traditions, particularly the Roman ones, and from there things slid over into other kinds of history.

"...so yeah, that's why our God's depicted like that. They weren't really very mad at him or anything, the Romans just had what they felt were bigger things goin' on, and other factions pushed for them to get him outta the picture."

"But the empire of the Romans is no longer here, while there remain yet people who worship this man," Starfire added thoughtfully. "I wonder if some day people will think that the Batman and the Superman are no longer important, and attach great importance to things that we think are trivial."

"I dunno. Maybe. It depends on a lot of things." He sat down on yellow blocks with care, mindful not to put too much weight on any one spot. Couldn't dent the bottles. And man, this was a weird place to be having this kinda conversation! "We all wanna know that the things we do matter, but that doesn't have to mean bein' acknowledged. Even if no one worshipped God, He'd still be God. Or, you know, your God. Zzz. God_s_. No 'fence." He shifted awkwardly.

She didn't seem pissed, though. "Tell me, Cyborg, why do you not visit the church more frequently?" She sat down on a honey mustard pedestal, swinging a leg idly. "Is it because you feel it would be an imposition upon the Titans, since Beast Boy, and Raven, and Robin and I do not share your God?"

"Eheh, no, noooo, nothin' like that!" He grinned and waved a hand. If he were a cartoon character he was pretty sure he would be sweatdropping right now. "It's just that things get so busy, you know, it's hard to make time. And a lotta people I know, well. They turned it into this big showy ritual, of how you go to church and dress the right way and talk to the right people. And that always seemed like missin' the point to me. I could probably stand to go a little more often, 'specially around the holidays, but I don't feel like believin' in God and followin' the faith has to make you a slave to routine. I mean, the big thing about being Christian is love. God is love. And who do ya know with more love in his heart than _me_, eh?"

They shared rather sly smirks. It was a rare moment when Starfire's sense of humor and an Earthling's sense of humor collided, but it did happen sometimes. "No one at all," she replied, patting him on the head. Stiffening himself for an unintended bruise, he was pleasantly surprised when she only used an appropriate light touch. Wow. She had been practicing a lot. Maybe all those makeout sessions with Robin helped. Then her expression turned down a tad. "Robin does not exhibit a sense of comfort around your faith. It puzzles me that he would react so to a faith native to his planet, but not towards mine, which should be strange to him."

He thought that through with a pondering frown. "Well, I didn't agree with a lot of what that lady said, but I will say that it's true that it's hard to respect somethin' if you've spent your whole life seein' how the gears of it churn. Maybe he doesn't care about your beliefs one way or the other because he hasn't seen enough to make a judgment call. Now, us Christians... for better or worse we've left a mark on this old mudball. And it's easy to get caught up in the people who use Christ as an excuse to hate, instead of a reason to love. But even if we've got some bad apples, it really is all about the love. Don't ever let anyone tell ya different."

"I will allow anyone to tell me anything they wish, of course, but I do not have to agree with their opinion. I am a little afraid to share my faith with Robin, now that I have seen how he reacts to a religion he is familiar with. But perhaps, while we wait for him to do the mellowing, we could share our faiths with each other to come to a greater understanding. Perhaps we can debate Ms. Ashton's theories with suitable rebuttal points once we have contrasted our own beliefs appropriately? That is, unless you would consider learning of Tamaranian deities to be the bore, in which case-"

He held up a hand and she obligingly halted in her verbal tracks. "Honey, that's the difference between me and Beast Boy. After all these years, haven't you noticed?"

Starfire looked at him, two-thirds blank, one third puzzled.

Cyborg grinned, the sheen of yellow plastic wobbling across his red lens. "I haven't let myself get bored of _anything_ in this great old life yet, and I'm not startin' now. So, you share me yours, and I'll share ya mine. Deal?"

She clasped her hands in joy. "It is a deal!"


	6. Chapter 6

6

When it came right down to the hard cold truth of the matter, as much as Robin detested the idea of a church devoted to his girlfriend, there was nothing he could do to stop it without making a big public scene even bigger. More and more, he took time out from what little leisure he did allow himself to spend time on the phone yelling at various people. Raven was personally sure that half of those calls involved Batman yelling just as angrily right back, and given the circumstances accorded their leader a bit more leeway than usual for being grumpy and short with his words. It didn't affect their performance in battle any, of course. They were far too professional by now to let things like this put their lives or the mission at risk. But one interesting side effect was that Raven noticed Starfire and Robin making out quite a bit less. This only met with her approval, since in her opinion they'd been getting far too comfortable with PDAs lately. If their relationship was to last, it would have to weather things like this, anyway. And if it didn't? Well, they'd go back to being friends again and things would return to 'normal.' There was a small selfish part of Raven that wanted the second thing to happen. So she'd feel less self-conscious about Cyborg and Beast Boy hitting on women, but not on her. So she'd stop thinking about Malchior so much. But she knew herself well enough by now to acknowledge that self-centered motive and then discard it as pointless.

The Church of Starfire did get built, but the Titans relaxed a little the more they watched the process. Everyone had had fears of some deranged out of control cult. They'd been worried about blood rites and sacrifices and brainwashing, and people prostrating themselves wherever the Titans went. The actual church turned out to be far more mundane than that, and not remotely villainous. Not evil, just... weird, in a tabloid sort of way. Several zoning issues caused the church to eventually be placed on a squeezed spot between a shoe shop and a fellowship house for troubled youth. There wasn't much room for fancy decorating in the space. Made of plain brick of brown and tan with off-white window and door furnishings, it looked more like a poorly-funded fitness center than a church, although they had tried very hard to manage a proper steeple with what room they had to work with. There were only two floors. The pearly letters just above the door said CHURCH OF STARFIRE, along with the service times, but they could have just as easily advertised anything else. While there were a number of others willing to follow Ms. Ashton in her unique madness, it was obvious that far fewer were willing to give of their bank accounts to make the dream come true. The media initially loved it unto death, of course, but once they figured out it wasn't getting enough popular local support to compete with 'real' churches, coverage of it dwindled. Many of those that Ms. Ashton had hoped to convert stayed with their old church. There were plenty of people around the globe who professed their faith in the Church of Starfire, but most seemed to do it at least half-jokingly, and there were no significant numbers making a pilgrimage to join.

Ms. Ashton was nominated to become the pastor of the new thirty member church (Raven knew that Robin had eerily managed to memorize the entire membership list, including middle names), and surprisingly refused. Her official explanation was that she didn't believe a woman should be in charge of a church, which seemed an odd belief to pair with near-worship of Starfire, but Raven wasn't one to know how a Christian fundamentalist's mind worked. Instead, an elderly balding man who talked slowly and had a vague but genuine smile permanently attached to his drooping face stepped up to the job. Only a few sentences of analyzing his vocal skills had Raven and everyone else quite at ease; while he had the firm conviction of true belief, he was utterly out of touch with anything that had happened since the seventies, and didn't seem inclined towards fiery rhetoric. It seemed rather likely that Ms. Ashton had allowed him to become pastor so that she could tug his strings behind the scenes without offending her sensibilities, not that she would have thought of it that way.

The Titans were invited to the first service. There was a length debate about whether attending would be seen as a stamp of approval or not. They settled on a compromise, with Robin and Beast Boy staying home, while Raven, Cyborg, and of course Starfire went along. No formal clothes this time, to make the distinct point that they didn't consider the Church of Starfire a 'real' church. Cyborg was also instructed to give Ms. Ashton and the pastor a long, careful talk afterwards about exactly which lines were push-able and which were not to be crossed under peril of lightning-fast legal action. It was Robin's hope that the words would be taken more seriously coming from a fellow Christian, as it were.

Normal cheap plastic and aluminum chairs and bland carpeting were the main sights at that service. There was a fundraiser going around to create a proper stained glass window of Starfire, but in the meantime, all that was in the spot behind the pulpit was a taped up piece of paper with a drawn diagram of how the glass would look. It was actually a rather beautiful drawing, and Raven felt wistful on seeing it, though she knew how crazy a reaction that was. People saw Starfire as gorgeous and near-divine, and presented her as such. It wasn't a huge leap to see her that way. Meanwhile, people like herself... a daughter of the devil could only hope for lack of attention, at best. That gray skin and modest haircut didn't do anything for her. It was hard not to pull her hood up, but at least people didn't stare at her too obviously. One old man did ask about the chakra, implying something demonic about Eastern religions and reincarnation, but Raven pointedly ignored the remark and he was shushed sharply by his wife.

There were a few members who weren't old, but most were middle-aged or older. It wasn't so much that the younger generations weren't inclined towards idolatry, Raven thought, than it was that they preferred to express that sentiment differently. The Titans had all seen the lewd pictures on the internet, the illicit scribblings of made up adventures and romantic liaisons, the intricate reports on every time a Titan so much as twitched in public. Some Titans had seen a good bit more than others. Raven happened to know that Beast Boy had spent a probably unhealthy amount of hours looking at risque material devoted to the team, until one day he'd apparently come across something concerning Terra. Then he'd just stopped, as suddenly as a book slamming shut, and he'd remained sour for almost a week afterwards. She'd never dared to ask him for details. It wasn't her concern, anyway. People were ridiculous, and would always do ridiculous things.

Whereas Cyborg and Starfire attended with enthusiasm to devote to meeting people and trying to impress upon the world the essential mundanity of the Titans, Raven was more interested in the accompanying rituals. The Church of Starfire's trappings of faith weren't much different from the originating one's, save for being much more restricted in terms of people, space, and financial support. The prayer was longer, the songs slower, in keeping with the more traditional and formal tastes of the congregation. The sermon's message was a little irritatingly uninformative and full of celebratory words about the establishment of the church. The vague self-involvement of it made Raven wonder if they had any concrete beliefs or spiritual statements to begin with, and if the lack would be better or worse. She wanted to read Ms. Ashton's mind, find out why she was doing this... try to understand what seemingly could not be understood. The joys and solemnities of these people were things she felt barred from, like the true alien visitor she was. But the thought of such a violation in such a place, meant to be holy by the intentions of the founders whether it succeeded in that or not, filled her with shame, and she refrained from abusing her powers.

Cyborg and Starfire had no such troubles looking right at home. It made her wistful.

Because it was a much smaller and closer gathering than the norm, people were very slowly to leave after the service ended, and the presence of the Titans surely didn't help speed things along. Everyone seemed to want to say 'Bless you,' to Starfire. Raven was unsure exactly what kind of blessing they meant to impart, but it seemed very important to them that they each get the chance to say it. Starfire thrived under the attention, taking every care to be friendly and welcoming while not actually expressing agreement with their views of her spiritual nature.

No one paid any attention to Raven or Cyborg.

Gradually drifting to doors and then outside, Raven thought over how expressive Malchior had been in his flattery. How he'd made her feel beautiful and special and wanted. As though she'd given meaning to his life. As though she'd had meaning of her own to impart to begin with. And she considered how Starfire, ever the social butterfly, had to love having all this attention, even if the motives behind it were more than a little off the wall. There, too, was the matter of Robin, and how he'd taken so poorly to this whole thing. He hadn't liked it when Red X had flirted with Starfire, either, just as Starfire had developed a distaste for Kitten. Maybe love and faith did intersect somewhat. Certainly in the matter of possessiveness... how many times had she heard, on the news, about some group or other stirring up a fuss over the violation of the holiness of THEIR god, who was not at all like the foreigners' god? Spiritual or romantic, you respected that relationship or you defiled it. There was no in-between.

She hated that no one had paid attention to her.

Closing her eyes and leaning against that cold, rough brick surface and listening to traffic go by, she imagined what it would be like, to have these foolish grandparents and retirees think her an angel. Raven thought about how easy it was to manipulate people if you just didn't care about their wellbeing, and how infuriatingly prone they were to doing the wrong thing even when you were trying to take care of them. Just like sheep. They were just like sheep. Idiots. She could have them all groveling at her feet if she truly wanted it. She could wrap them all in darkness and glare red and laugh at their screams and tears. All this time, she'd lived the life of a normal teenager as best she could, like some cast aside wastrel, when she could have had the world eating from her hand. Or at least a goodly portion of the world. She wanted to believe it was some remnant of her cursed father in her that made her think such things. But she knew it wasn't. She knew that after all this time, after giving so much, and seeing people still being so... so themselves... she was tired and frustrated and wanted something back out of it. It wasn't as hard as it had been, now, to visualize the temptation of turning to selfish ways, and using her powers to take what could be taken and crumble the weak under her heel. Really, people like Slade and Trigon and Brother Blood were somewhat sympathetic, if only because they had a level of simple intelligence that the masses seemed to lack so utterly. They were evil, but they weren't shallow. They set their sights on goals and achieved them, and weren't deluded by superficial things. Not like these stupid people, who only thought of bad ideas and only got even those things just half done.

Feeling sour and bitter and disliking herself for it, Raven checked back inside. Everything seemed to be under control. She murmured to Cyborg that she was going to head off, and he nodded and waved while continuing his loud argument with the pastor on whether homosexuality was a sin or not. Raven didn't listen long enough to tell which side he was on. Strife came to them often enough that looking for it was foolishness. Wanting to burn a little of the gloom out of herself, she decided to walk part of the way back on the sidewalks. She could always teleport or fly when she got sick of being on the ground, or if an alert came in on the communicator.

Pulling up her hood on the way back made her feel a little better, but not completely back to her old self. The general weariness and disgust wouldn't leave her. Of all the things in the world to consider holy, why Starfire? Of course she knew the answer. Starfire was the kind of girl people imagined. Curved, flaunting her beauty without meaning to, just a little vulnerable and innocent to the ways of the world while still being able to take care of herself. And wholly goodhearted. Raven couldn't even pretend to be anything other than an irritable bookworm. There were no sarcastic, quiet, practical people in the romantic comedies. A no-nonsense attitude killed the happy ending vibe. Or something.

Ugh, humans.

Highly aware of how borderline racist and megalomaniacal her thoughts were turning out to be, Raven tried an experiment. One she hadn't really expected to try, but not one she had any particular aversion to. When you didn't like yourself, it was time for a change. And there was no point in scolding others for their behavior if you didn't know what it entailed to start with. So Raven tried a little prayer to whatever deities might exist, eyes half-shut so everything was a blur, her strides slowing to an automatic bumpless repetition that had her moving along as evenly as a telekinetic float.

_'Just in case You do exist in either singular or plural, I want to be clear, this is not going to be a regular thing,_' she first thought, then mentally winced, wishing she could take the thought back. That was brazen and sarcastic. No way to talk to even one of the supposedly petty minor deities, let alone a Christianity level all-powerful monotheistic one. '_Sorry. I'm used to being sarcastic. But if You exist and had a part in my existing too, then I guess You'd know that, wouldn't you?_' It seemed strange to attribute her being here to anything divine. She was too used to blaming the wicked. But that was no more a contradiction than the fact that normal people gave thanks to a God for live even though they had two mortal parents, really. In her case, contrast was just a little greater, so... argh. She had to stop thinking in the middle of this. This was a prayer! Supposed to be, anyway. '_I just want to say, since I've never bothered before, thank You for all my friends. I don't know if I love the world like Starfire does. But I love my friends, even if I can't tell them that much. And I'm glad I'm here with them, and I hope You'll let me stay with them for a long time to come._' It was easier now, to concentrate on the parts of her life she liked, once she started really sorting through all the memories of her times with the team. Being a hero. Saving her teammates and being saved by them. Sharing little delicate moments of intimacy and humor, so much more private and fragile than the stone-hard, burningly open passions of the religious. '_And thank you for letting me meet Melvin, Teether and Timmy. It was amazing, finding out Bobby was real. We still don't know how that's possible. There's so many mysteries in the world and I get jaded sometimes and don't stop to wonder, and I apologize for that._'

Raven had meant to say more, but crossing the street jumbled up her thoughts. Truck horns were too loud, she'd always thought that, but never more so than now. She couldn't think of what else there was to say. What could one person possibly say to the divine? What words could someone like her, an orphaned thing given powers by accursed genetics and embraced in a family by sheer luck, ever give to a superior being that would ever have any significant meaning? For all her attempts to improve herself, for all her reading and meditation and mastery of magic, she still felt like she'd accomplished nothing at all. Maybe that was just the universe's way of making sure she used her powers instead of sitting on them lazily. It was important that she used them, she knew now, though her older self would have disagreed strongly. Those who had powers others didn't were obligated to use them. Not because they were better. The fact that she'd been sired from a demon hadn't been her choice and hadn't defined her moral structure. No, she was just luckier, in a twisted sort of way. Her curse had come with a gift attached, and neglecting that was selfish and self-absorbed. Maybe she didn't like doing things like going to churches and interacting with people like this, but that was part of being a hero. And it was a life she wouldn't trade for anything save maybe the love and safety of her friends. Excepting Beast Boy, of course!

...no, that wasn't right. Joking like that even silently just felt wrong, after everything else. She'd grown beyond that by now. Beast Boy meant the world to her, even if they annoyed each other dreadfully. If pressed to it, he'd express the same sentiment, and immediately make a very bad joke afterwards that she might be forced to smack him for. Their routine had become honed to the point of being close to slapstick.

She flew the rest of the way home then, taking the time to really look down at the world and appreciate all the little details that made up Jump City. All the work that had gone into designing and erecting the steel and stone buildings. The trees and shrubs and decorative flowerbeds, still green despite the lack of rain lately. The fact that there were no visible crimes occurring, and there was no one who could appreciate something like that quite like a vigilante hero could. The birds perched in trees, along wires, or soaring through the air like her. It was a good world. All the more so for being one freed of her father's dark designs. Not a perfect world, but she was, overall, rather content with it. Especially her little part of it.

Raven was always one to feel small, though she imagined that from someone down on the ground, she might look important and interesting. Perhaps the level of holiness in something differed depending on the onlooker's location. To an ant, wouldn't a human seem like a god? And to her, Trigon had seemed... well, magnificent, in a horrible way, until she'd found the strength to stand up to him. These things perhaps had more variability than people wanted to give them. Then again, maybe she was just a cynical and blasphemous half-demon, what did she know?

When she dropped in on the tower roof, Beast Boy was there, doing... _something_... with a plastic Nativity scene set and some of their old Christmas lights.

"Not even going to ask."

"That's prob'ly for the best," he replied with a chuckle, before looking up at her. "Hey. Your cheeks are red."

"Probably from the cold air," she explained unconcernedly, heading for the stairs.

"Don't see you blush much. Looks cute," he added, turning back to his little whatever it was. The shapeshifter didn't appear to mean anything by it. Just another thoughtless comment from an impulsive person.

Raven blinked in surprise, and went down the stairs a little slower than she otherwise might have. It was just one compliment. It meant nothing and had no intention or purpose behind it. Nonetheless, it was convenient timing, to come after she'd been so disheartened by everyone's interest in Starfire. She thought about asking Beast Boy what _his _idea of an angel would look like, but then figured it not worth the bother. He'd probably just say something silly, like a giant flying furball with a dolphin's voice and a lion's head and a wolverine's musk smell, or something like that. She was probably talking to him too much as it was, getting ideas like _that_.

There was probably, Raven had to admit, no God. Not in the sense monotheistic religions meant. It was simply an unlikely idea. But if there was, then she certainly appreciated the subtlety. It put a smile on her face, damned to hell though she'd be before she'd admit to it.


	7. Chapter 7

7

It was probably inevitable that Cyborg would become the unwilling irregular liaison from the Titans to the Church of Starfire. Out of them all, he had the least baggage to deal with regarding religion, along with being the most well-informed on Christian social dynamics and organizational structures. So every month or so, when there was a call from the Church about whether exposing one's midriff publicly was a suitable gesture of holiness when undertaken by an eighty year old, or a supper gathering where the Church wanted the exact color id of the purple in Starfire's uniform for the tablecloths, it was not Starfire but Cyborg who handled it. He was able to talk to them without their interpreting every word he said as holy scripture, which the Titans started to realize was pretty useful after the third time the Church declared a food officially unholy because Starfire happened to mention disliking it. So, with an appropriate level of distance, dwindling publicity fixated on the spectacle, and no major catastrophes so far, the months went by normally, and the Titans were, with more than a bit of relief, able to focus on crimefighting. There was a little more offhand idle banter about theology, but four of the five had learned to hush up about such things when Robin was around, and that worked out well enough.

Then one day, the catastrophe that Robin had seemed to have been waiting for finally happened.

Cyborg listened carefully, asking Mrs. Hyeung to repeat what she'd said just in case he'd heard wrong. Nope. And the dramatic explosions and screams and other, less obvious sounds in the background certainly gave the necessary level of distress to the situation. Dang, Robin was not going to like this at all. Especially with Raven and Starfire off in Australia exorcising that poltergeist kangaroo.

"Robin, I hate to tell ya this, but apparently one of the congregation over at Star's church has gone totally bonkers," he informed his noble leader after squeaking gingerly into the gym.

Robin slammed down both the weights he'd been pumping with dual clangs, making Cyborg wince. No one should mistreat metal so callously. "I knew it! I knew it was only a matter of time! I _told_ everyone to hide their virgins and goats, but no, they just..."

He winced and caught Robin by the back of his sweaty shirt as the boy was making his way out at top speed. "Dude. Relax. It's just a wacko without any powers or anything. Someone's second cousin who just went off his meds, apparently. No guns, no one even bruised so far. You've been working out for hours, you're exhausted. Lemme handle this one before you strain something important, like your lovemakin' muscles. Eh? Eh?" He grinned and elbowed the boy in the side, trying to force down Robin's mission mode state of mind with slightly perverse jolliness.

On understanding that it wasn't an Emergency emergency, but rather just a regular old emergency, Robin slowed down. He kept walking, but Cyborg was strong enough that the feet just kept moving in place. The shoes made cute squeaky sounds on the floor. "Actually Starfire has said she doesn't want to give herself up until the snarflox night of gooflogug," Robin said quite blankly.

"Huh. When's that?"

"I have no idea."

Cyborg considered how much luckier he was than Robin, to have plenty of cute non-alien babes interested in his artificial yet still oh so sculpted physique.

"Anyway, you're the liaison, it's your call and I trust you to make a fair one." A year ago maybe, definitely two years ago, Robin wouldn't have been able to say something like that. He'd come a long way. They all had. "Bu at least take Beast Boy with you. It's asking for trouble to go without _any_ backup. And he can get you there faster than the car if you're willing to let a green pterodactyl play taxi."

As much as he loved his baby, Cyborg had to admit that was a fine idea. And superhero-quality gas was getting pricey these days. So he roused his green pal from a raspberry cookie dough-infused slumber and they zoomed off to the churchly trouble spot, while Cyborg did his best not to look down too much. It didn't help that Beast Boy squawked and pretended to almost drop him sometimes, just to mess with him. Little green jerk.

It wasn't hard to find the church from a bird's eye view. In fact, it was wayyyyy easier than Cyborg would have liked, because the chaos was spilling onto the streets and mucking up traffic for miles around. It was difficult to tell exactly _what_ was going on, though. There were a few small fires, but nothing dangerous or arson-worthy. Folks were spread out all over the place in thick clusters. The ones who weren't near fires were mostly standing around with the inquisitiveness of people that figured trouble was in the area and would make a good show so long as they saw it coming, and more people were coming by on the edges just to see what the others were looking at. The firemen and police were already on the premises, but they'd had to park quite a ways back because of traffic and were having trouble making their way through the crowd.

"Beast Boy, go help those firemen get to the fires! I don't care if you have to go rhino, some of these buildings are wood, we don't want that spreading!"

"REEOOAAAWK!"

He was gonna assume that was a 'Sure thing, my very handsome and intelligent friend.' "But first, drop me off at..." He hesitated, bringing his electronic eye into the action to scan things with a bit more depth. Just on the off chance, he tried scanning for...

Bingo.

"Drop me off at the flailing guy with the tinfoil hat behind that building!" God bless crazy people for having their habits just like everyone else.

Although undubitably crazy and apparently destructive to the environment given the way he was running around kicking over trash bins and breaking windows, the wild-haired man wasn't without his manners. In fact, as soon as Cyborg landed, the man looked up at him with a grinning expression of welcome that Cyborg wasn't used to seeing from people he was expecting to have to disarm and hold down.

"BROTHER CYBORG! I'm so glad you're here!"

"Whoa, man, I think you're a little confused," Cyborg said, hastily holding out a hand to stop the approaching guy from doing... whatever it was he was gonna do with those outstretched arms. "For one thing, I happen to _know_ we ain't brothers." Wrong skin tone for even the slang usage of the term.

"Oh, no no no, I meant Brothers in Christ," the man corrected. "I'm Edgar. We met when you first came to the Church, remember? Remember that big argument we had over whether fishnets were socially appropriate? And Starfire thought we were talking about fishing?"

"I do now," he replied with a grimace. "Look, are you the cause of all... this?" he asked with an indicative finger circling around. To drive the point home, a chicken with its tail on fire flew by, following by an angry cleaver-waving Korean man right on its heels.

"It's all for their own good, Cyborg! They wouldn't listen to my plan for baptizing the whole community to save their souls from eternal hellfire, so I _had_ to stuff the paprika in that shih-tzu!"

Okay, he saw what kind of day this was going to be. Cyborg sighed and rubbed at his forehead, letting all the stress out. And then took a look around for anyone that looked like Mad Mod, just in case. No Mad Mod lookalikes. No British accents in the air. That was good, he could handle one lone whackjob without a magic zappy cane. "How were you gonna baptize the whole community, man? There's almost as many people in Jump and its suburbs as there are in New York."

Edgar blinked mildly. "I was going to redirect one of the rivers, so that the-"

"_Right_," Cyborg interrupted firmly, getting the gist. "It's not right to force your beliefs on other people, man. Come on, I'll talk you home and we can go get your meds. I think that'd be for the best, don't you?"

At about this point, Beast Boy landed behind him with an ungainly dinosaurian thump-flap before turning back to his usual impish self and hopping up on Cyborg's shoulder for a better look at the culprit. "Firemen all at the fires! This guy didn't do all this, did he?"

"Apparently."

"Wow, how?"

"I don't think that's really important right now, Beast Boy! Focus!"

"Fine, _Robin_."

Ow. That had been uncalled for. "So, Edgar, are you ready to go?" Cyborg held out a hand.

"Why would you want to stop the work of the Lord?" Edgar asked plaintively. "If I don't save people from themselves, who will?"

"Dude, you're not saving anyone, you're just causing trouble!" Beast Boy snapped. "If you ask me, you're the one who needs saving from himself!"

Edgar thrust out his well-shaved chin. "The Lord stands by those who treat their body as a temple and are well-groomed! Facial hair is as graffiti unto His sight, Second Thessalonians 6:14!"

"Hey, I can't help it if... Cy, is that really in the Bible?" Beast Boy asked plaintively. "

"Of course not!" He paused. "I'm like, ninety-nine percent sure, anyway."

"So it _might_ be? I could use a straight answer here dude! Do you know how long it would take to shave my whole face?"

"You're not even Christian, what do you care?"

"Well, I might be some day, who knows? I don't wanna piss your God off just in case He's real!"

"Oh, and the garlic hot sauce water balloon last Monday wouldn't have pissed Him off, I'm sure..." Wait. Hold on. Getting distracted again. Had to be mature, had to be Robinly now. "So, Edgar-"

"Both of you are clearly not the good clean souls I thought you were," Edgar said with a pout that only served to make Cyborg even more suspicious of him. "Cyborg, why don't you have a cross nailed onto your metally bits?"

"Well, setting aside the fact that my parts are delicate, precision instruments and that calling them metally bits is kinda insulting to their craftsmanship, I'd have to say it's because I'm a superhero who happens to be Christian, and not a Christian superhero, you get it?"

"You're just an unbeliever in a true believer's clothing! Except you don't even HAVE clothing, so you're also a perverse NUDIST! J'ACCUSE!"

Beast Boy and Cyborg looked at each other, blinking in shared confusion.

Then Edgar kicked the weirdness up a notch, reaching behind him to heft up what appeared to be a mallet-shaped stack of Bibles wired, stapled and taped together. They all looked like the extra-scholarly study editions of Bibles, too, so the whole thing altogether was pretty big and heavy. Edgar's arms quivered just holding it.

"Hold still, O lost sheep! I will thump the sin out of you with the power of the Word of God!"

"HEY! THAT IS NOT HOW BIBLES ARE S'POSED TO BE USED!" Cyborg yelled in outrage as he zigged and Beast Boy squirreled and zagged, both of them avoiding the thump just in time. The next swing went for his legs, and he jumped over it and skeedaddled backwards, trying to calculate a power setting on his laser that would be right for knocking the nutcase out without doing any serious damage. Beast Boy went beaver and tried to gnaw through the Bible-mallet, but despite many valiant attempts, Edgar was swinging it too fast and too often, the weight of the thing having built up quite a bit of momentum despite Edgar's negligible upper body strength.

"In the name of the Christ, ye shalt wear abstinence rings and Jesus t-shirts, especially that one where he's like a ninja and a cyborg and a pirate all at once!" Swing, WHOOSHmiss. A page of Genesis fluttered out of one Bible and drifted to the ground, looking lonely. "The Lord shall purify thee with little dangly crosses, not to be confused with crucifixes, which are creepy and heathen and promote zombie uprisings just like Catholics!" Swing, WHOOSHmiss. A lot of the little ribbon placeholders were dangling out now. "You're lukewarm, Titans! Hast the blessing of thine angel's presence made thine hearts lax towards proper deference towards the Lord?" SwingWHOOSHTHONK. Charging ram Beast Boy flew back into Cyborg, who caught his buddy and set him down gently. Beast Boy snorted in equine annoyance and pounded hooves at the ground for another go. "Once you give yourself up to the Lord NOTHING is the same, FOREVER! How can you call yourself saved if your faith isn't TRANSFORMATIVE?"

Beast Boy went to humanoid again mid-charge, mouth moving as his brain worked out the 'transformative' part and quickly got offended. "Okay, now I'm pissed," he growled, almost more animalistic in sound than in his actual animal forms. "Dude, do you know who you're _talking_ to?" he snarled, ducking another blow much more easily as his regular lithe little self. "How's _this_ for transformative?"

The changeling's next maneuver was impressive, even by Cyborg's count of impressive tactical maneuvers. Beast Boy went hummingbird to gain immediate vertical height, hawk to dive down, and then octopus a fraction of a second before colliding with Edgar's face, wrapping the poor crazed guy's face in tentacley, suction cup-equipped slimy green justice. Edgar let out a muffled shriek, dropping the mallet and groping at the tentacles ineffectually.

"Very nice," Cyborg commented, calmly picking Edgar up and hoisting him over his shoulder. "D'ya mind stayin' like that till we get him somewhere safe? I've had about enough guilt trippin' for today." Beast Boy waved one tentacle end in a thumbs up approximation. "Awesome. You're the best, BB."

As ridiculous as the whole thing was, the walk through people to get Edgar tended to and to talk to the police was slowed enough that Cyborg had time for a little contemplation. How were some things so obvious and common sense that even an alien, a half-demon, and a guy with animal brains half the time could all understand, but regular old folks couldn't? Maybe it was just the lack of the meds. Edgar definitely needed those meds. But today's antics had just been an exaggeration of what a lot of people already felt, Cyborg knew. They kept trying to bring love to people's hearts like Edgar wanted to, flooding a city to baptize the lost. How could they not see that that wasn't how it worked? How couldn't they see that it didn't count unless the water dunk was voluntary? If you used your faith as a weapon, people hated it as a thing that hurt them. You had to wait for them to come to you, and share when they were ready. Which was why he'd pointedly not asked Robin why he hated religion so much. Robin would share in his own time. Or maybe not, but that wasn't Cyborg's problem. Every day they fought against wicked people and wicked things, but that didn't mean they could fix everything. So many hotheaded clashes with Beast Boy and Robin, and especially that little Max-7 incident, had taught Cyborg that being in control wasn't the most important thing. Sometimes you just had to let things go.

Like people.

So when he delivered Edgar to the police and learned that the poor guy was going to a mental institution, he sighed and didn't make a big fuss over it. But he did make a point of getting the name of the institution, so he could visit sometime.

Because no matter how spiritually vindicated or morally justified you figured you were, everyone got lonely sometimes.


	8. Chapter 8

8

As soon as he heard the news, Robin quietly went up to his room, made sure the door was firmly shut, and laughed till he cried.

After months of worrying, of protracted phone conversations with various officials, of tiptoeing around Starfire and Cyborg's ridiculous newly-stoked religious fervor, of trying to plan out every possible scenario both legal and criminal that could arise and scripting out suitable countering actions by his team, it was all going to be shut down. Just like that. The Church of His Freaking Girlfriend was to be no more, and he couldn't have been happier about it.

He couldn't have blamed that random Ohio Representative for being wary of a confluence of superheroic and religious forces. He shared the exact same concern, in fact. The original motion hadn't actually been that useful in and of itself, but it had placed focus on the Church and encouraged the government to delve in for a more thorough inspection. After the dust had settled from the resulting denominational squabbles (and if Robin had believed in God, he would have blessed the tendency of the faithful towards factionalism), major religious entities ended up dropping support for the Church, and the government had deemed theological differences sufficiently wide to kick the Church out of tax-exempt status. When it came down to it, as much as people loved gossip about heroes and appreciated the protection, they were also rightfully scared of superheroes, and most people didn't want to see costumed vigilantes become the next thing to worshiped. The real turning point had been when Superman himself had made a public statement against the Church... not very severely, just a little cautious, but that had been all the news networks had needed to spin into outright condemnation. Batman's alter ego had also played a heavy part in influencing certain parties behind the scenes. Robin decided he'd just have to take a deep breath and thank his mentor later, however tersely.

The Church had just officially announced it was officially dissolving as a separate entity. All members were headed back to their old church, presumably to be welcomed back by their smug fellow congregation members.

Maybe the team had been right all along, he considered. As far as his treating it like a problem to solve instead of something to ignore until it went away, at least. Robin knew he was prone to over-thinking things, and he certainly had his reasons for taking this especially seriously, even if the others wouldn't ever understand. They hadn't seen what he'd seen, a world that made him reject any belief in a benevolent person in the sky being in charge over any of it. He didn't really want them to see, anyway; there were a lot of reasons why he had never taken the Titans to Gotham besides the fact that relations with Batman were stiff at best. They'd seen a lot, suffered a lot, but not the worst. He wouldn't have them tainted by that red sky.

It was late. There were no alerts, crime was low tonight, and he'd already exercised himself to soreness today. He excused himself to have a relaxing ride on his bike, not mentioning that he intended to ride by the ex-Church grounds. Not to gloat, he told himself. There was to be no gloating. It was all business. He just wanted to make sure everything was going smoothly, that was all. Nothing wrong with that.

The rush of the wind over his body was purifying. Motion was progress, progress was improvement, and improvement was the closest he'd get to thinking about the concept of salvation. That was what life was about. Getting things _done_, not just praying and hoping for some imaginary person in the sky to do it for you. The parishioners he'd seen looked the type to mostly be scared of riding a motorcycle, or God forbid, fighting back against the evil they saw every day. Of course, Robin reminded himself, that was why the Titans were needed. It was all over now, there was no need to be bitter. And hopefully all the annoying religious debates in the team would die down now that the Church wasn't being an exacerbating element anymore.

The Church building, easy to overlook as it was, was further concealed by several moving vans and piles of boxes out in front. There was no one around, though. Apparently they were still inside organizing. But it was strange that they'd just leave things on the sidewalk like that instead of putting them in the truck. Really very sloppy and disorganized.

Robin shook his head, pushed away the sourness, and parked his bike. He'd offer to help. They were probably shorthanded, being mostly elderly people. It would be a gesture of good will and not smug triumph at all. It looked like it might rain, soon, too, and there was no use in letting cardboard and the things contained in cardboard get all wet.

He let himself in and looked around at the extremely lonely-seeming building interior, with furniture half-moved, put up into piles and boxes half-filled with half-funded decorations. They had never finished getting half the things installed that they'd talked about. He looked over an old leaflet on a chair and saw that the last sermon was about striving in the face of adversity. Strangely, Robin felt almost depressed.

Bah, whatever.

Where _was_ everyone, though? Maybe they were all in the back rooms for some reason or other. Robin walked down the aisle, listening for sound and hearing nothing but the gentle whir of air-conditioning.

"Hello?"

A familiar red-glowing eye peered out from a shadow corner.

"Cyborg?" Robin asked instinctively, thinking his teammate had crept over to do some moving help himself.

"Why yes, I am one, as a matter of fact," Brother Blood's voice responded, rich and calm and ever so politely amused as any church pastor could be.

Robin had only just enough time to widen his eyes in shock and grope for his communicator before Blood came twirling out at him, landing a solid and extraordinarily precise backhand to the temple that sent him flying head over heels to crash into the opposite wall in a sprawl. The communicator flew in a completely different direction, leaving Robin saying a few words that would normally be frowned upon in this type of building.

"Hiding in an abandoned church, Blood? Is nothing sacred to you?" he growled, pulling out an explosive disc and flinging it the villain. He had to use one of the smaller ones; in quarters this cramped, a larger explosion could do a lot of damage to the surrounding structure.

With the pristine reflexes of a machine, Brother Blood caught the explosive and simply allowed it to detonate in his palm with the hand held well away from the rest of his body, beaming with parental superiority. "Of course there are many things that are _sacred_ to me, Robin," he said as though it were obvious, taking a few steps forward. "Chaos and disorder, for instance." Robin charged and swung with his staff, a blow that Blood easily ducked while not even breaking verbal stride. "Human suffering and the crushing of pathetic little lives for the greater good." An upswing with the staff was deflected by the merest flick of Blood's index finger. "The natural selection of the strong who feed upon the weak, leading to future generations that are all the better for the murder of their inferior underlings." Robin jabbed, and Blood caught the staff tip in his palm. "Speaking of which, I haven't killed the church members yet, but if you keep fighting me, I'll transmit the appropriate telepathic signal. You _do_ remember what my hypnosis is capable of, yes?"

Robin gritted his teeth briefly, then stepped back, not lowering his guard but not provoking the madman further. Why couldn't problems ever be resolved without someone evil just knocking over society's card castles for the sake of knocking them over? His communicator was... too far away. But he tried to inch towards it without seeming obvious about it. Raven and Starfire were off in a neighboring town dealing with a strange resurgence of tofu-based alien life forms, but even just getting Beast Boy and Cyborg over here - getting _anyone_ with superpowers over here - would be a marked improvement over the current situation.

"That's a boy," Blood encouraged him warmly. "I don't see the point in harming perfectly useful hostages unless I have something to gain from it, after all. Come to see the church off their holy ground, have you? Wonderful thought. I had the same idea myself, as a matter of fact," he taunted with a grin that would have been fit on a skull.

"What have you done with them, Blood..." he asked lowly, mostly as a distraction while he kept trying to get closer to the communicator.

Either Blood wasn't noticing the maneuver or he saw it and didn't care. "Oh, you needn't worry, they're not _nearly_ interesting enough for me to bother torturing. I actually just picked this building at random as a target, with the intention of expanding throughout the district with my own little army of loyal shopkeepers and parishioners. The thought occurred to me that it would be ever so much harder for you heroes to hinder my plans if you had to take a good bit of care in not damaging the lambs in the flock." Blood tsked and shook his head. "You Titans have never really understood. Lambs are meant for slaughtering, you know." He chuckled. "Haven't you ever eaten veal?"

"People aren't animals, Blood," Robin snapped back. Almost there. Just a few more feet and then he could lunge and roll for it. He just needed a few seconds to get a distress signal out, and then he could delay Blood long enough for the others to arrive. He hoped.

"'But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not and shall utterly perish in their own corruption,'" Blood intoned with oily smoothness. "Go ahead, call them," he added more casually, nodding as Robin froze. Blood smirked. "Call your friends here. I want to see the expression on Cyborg's face as I show him the weakness of flesh by rending yours asunder." He flexed steel fingers as though they were claws, looking almost demonic. The resemblance of his hairstyle and the metal projection on the robotized side of his face to horns certainly helped the image.

Robin weighed the risks of calling his friends into a potential trap against the risks of trying to solve this himself, and judged in favor of the former with great reluctance. He wasn't going to keep trying to do things on his own anymore, he'd learned his lesson. As bitter as it tasted even now.

"I think you'll find this flesh is stronger than you think!" he snarled, grabbing the communicator and sending out a quick top-priority distress message. They'd know it was a Blood-level threat by the code used. Taking a time out to tell them in detail what was going on wasn't in his plans.

He flung a smoke pellet at the ground and sprinted for the back rooms, knowing there wasn't anywhere else the hostages could be. If he could just get them out fast enough and slap them out of hypnosis, or at least restrain them... even knock them out, if he had to...

The stench of blood filled his nostrils.

Robin staggered to a stop in the middle of a scene of slaughter. Frail, wrinkled parchment skin torn, well-ironed and well-worn formal clothes ripped, milky old eyes were glazed over. Three husky, sloppily-dressed young men stood out from the rest; they had probably been the truck drivers or hired moving help. He looked around in horror, and counted. And saw all the faces that he'd burned into memory from his research in trying to tell them to bugger off and go worship their own stupid God instead of Starfire. Mrs. Ashton too? Yes, Mrs. Ashton too. The mere fact that her hair and clothes were in disorder seemed almost as blasphemous as the lifelessness of her body.

"Y-you said you spared them," he whispered, half to Blood, half to himself, and maybe a little bit to the God he didn't really believe in. Especially not now. They had believed in so much, and come to so little... for no reason, no reason at all...

"And you believed me!" Blood rejoined with a merry laugh, the laughter of a man who truly enjoyed what he was doing. "Sinking sand, Robin. Sinking sand."

Robin wheeled around, teeth barred in a snarl, only in time for Blood's open palm to smash into his face. His head snapped back into a shelf built sturdily to hold nigh-endless amounts of heavy study Bibles, and blackness swallowed up consciousness without mercy.


	9. Chapter 9

9

While Beast Boy's victory dance at a last successful 'HADOOOOKEN!' was loud, the emergency beeps from his and Cyborg's communicators were even louder. Game controllers were abandoned, a brief argument was had as they raced down the stairwell as to the fastest mode of transportation, and Beast Boy was, as he so often was, made into a green pterodactyl taxi despite Cyborg's assurances that the T-Car was faster than any dino that had ever become extincted on the Good Lord's green earth.

Neither of them were happy that the signal was pinpointing the Church building. Unlike Robin, they hadn't kept up with twenty different news feeds to be immediately notified of any changes in the Church's situation, and so, as far as they knew, it was still a Church with stuffy old people holding their pot luck dinners and whatever else it was stuffy old people did. Arguing outside about a clandestine or a bold approach, they went for a two-pronged deal: Beast Boy would infiltrate as a fly, while Cyborg crashed in the front door as a distraction. It was strange, how completely normal the outside of the area seemed. No smoke, no sign of fires or other emergencies, no one running, no panic or yells. Inside, though, they knew something had to be dreadfully wrong. The tonal code used for the alert that had been sent out was only designated for use for three enemies so far - Slade, Brother Blood, or (God forbid) Trigon. Cyborg was personally expecting Slade, based on the subtlety so far. The place was probably crawling with dozens of robot minions.

What skin Cyborg had left crawled as soon as he stepped inside into the crisp air-conditioned building, feet denting the carpet into a darker shade of mauve. Two things greeted him right away, just to let him know that yes, things were really screwed up.

The first was the smell of blood.

The second was someone humming Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy.'

Cyborg knew enough about creepy villains to brace himself to see something highly unpleasant, but even so, he wasn't ready for the sight that awaited him.

Robin had been tied to the central cross hung behind the pulpit with small floodlights centered on it. Everything above the waist save for his mask had been peeled off; the gloves, cape and shirt were all piled on the floor nearby. Along his small but highly muscular body, cuts had been made - not, Cyborg saw with immense relief, very deep cuts, and therefore not the source of that nasty smell. Shallow cuts that just barely bled at all, red lines that formed a complex symmetrical pattern that he didn't recognize. It made him think of blueprints.

Then he focused with his _human_ eye instead of the computer eye that focused on so much exacting detail rather than on the overall shape, and _then_ he recognized it. If you let your eye blur a little so that all the detail faded and it turned into a rough blob, it looked exactly like...

Like the Mark of Scath.

"Why Cyborg, what a pleasure to see you again!" Brother Blood's voice came out at him from horribly close by. Blood stepped out from behind a small pillar, looking every bit the happy host. "You're a bit early. I'm almost done reconsecrating this ground. Unfortunately, while Robin's a highly suitable sacrifice (I _assume_ he _is_ a virgin, I would hope?), his arrival's also delayed some of my other plans a trifle. Why, I haven't even hypnotized the rest of this block for a proper... _congregation_."

Feeling sick, Cyborg's eyes roamed until he saw the green speck he was looking for. He made a little motion with his head towards the back. Beast Boy took the hint, buzzing off after the blood smell to do what he could while Blood was busy hamming it up with good ol' arch-nemesis Cyborg.

"You're really sick, you know that, man?" he spat with genuine disgust. "What, was the evil schoolteacher gig not workin' out so well so you decided you had to play fake preacher instead?"

"Play, goodness me, no! While my criminal profession is largely composed of secular functions, I do believe wholeheartedly in the power of faith, you see. I would think you would feel the same way, considering," Blood paused to grimace in remembrance, "considering that you bested me in our last meeting solely due to your faith in the human spirit. I intend for things to go differently this time around."

Cyborg did his best to keep the villain talking. Beast Boy needed all the time he could get until they were ready to deal with this freak, and Robin didn't look like he was seriously injured, just KOed. "Man, if you believe in the power of faith so much, why don't you _acknowledge_ it when it _works_? Heck, if I'm lookin' at that scribble you scratched on my buddy right, not only should you not be wastin' our time stirring up trouble, you should be _worshipin_' my team mate!"

Blood blinked, looking taken aback for a change. His fingers curled and tapped together repeatedly. "I beg your pardon, Cyborg? Perhaps you're unfamiliar with my 'belief system,' as the kids are wont to call it nowadays. you see, I am in fact a worshiper of the great and terrible demon Trigon-"

"Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about! That's the Mark of Scath, right?"

Blood's jaw hung open as he stared in frank astonishment. In a less gruesome situation, Cyborg would have felt a fair bit of triumph over getting the man to do that.

"Thing is, _Brother_ Blood," Cyborg went on, realizing some of the import of the name for the first time, "Trigon had himself a little girl who just so happened to kick his butt. A little girl by the name of _Raven_, you mighta heard of her. So not only are you ignorin' the power of faith as I've shown it to you personally, you're all mixed up in a stupid religion that doesn't have any validity anymore since its object of worship got his butt kicked six ways from Sunday!"

"D-don't be ridiculous," Blood stammered, clenching fists in anger and smashing part of a chair into splintery fragments with an offhanded, frustrated blow. "Do you take me for a fool, to blindly accept any blasphemy spilling out of the mouth of a known deceiver like yourself? Even supposing that your Raven has been needlessly blessed with some faint bloodline connection to Lord Trigon, if He had entered into this world, all would have become stone and fire! And, of course, _blood_. Heh." He grinned, but it was the unhappy grin of someone who felt pressured into attack, rather than the expression he wore when he was really enjoying himself. Cyborg had had ample time to get acquainted with both expressions.

"Well, it kinda did," Cyborg admitted. "The world ended and stuff."

"Really." Blood raised an eyebrow.

"But then it got better." Okay, even _he_ knew that sounded dumb. Now he wished he'd recorded the event or something.

"Interesting if true," Blood rejoined dryly. Behind him, Beast Boy peeked out from a doorway, looking unhealthily pale, his eyes shrunk to pinpricks in seas of white. The changeling, mouth slightly open and eyes shining with unshed moisture, made a throat slicing gesture and shook his head slowly.

So. No hostages other than Robin to save. How many had Blood killed? Poor old churchgoing folks who needed canes just to walk around and couldn't defend themselves from so much as a stray poodle. Cyborg felt what little mercy and good will he'd cultivated for Brother Blood throughout the conversation abruptly terminate into icy-cold desire for retribution.

"Home run slam," he told Beast Boy grimly while bringing up his cannon.

It was a simple but effective procedure they'd worked out not too long ago. Beast Boy, still fully unnoticed by Blood, turned into a ram and charged the villain from behind. Spiral horns smashed into the man's back and sent him flying. Cyborg pivoted and snapped into a kneeling position to get the right angle to send a laser into Blood, furthering the already considerable force involved in the villain's flight. To his credit, Blood retained enough presence of mind to twist in midair and land feet-first in the wall instead of head-first, but he still sunk up to his kneecaps in plaster with a painful-sounding crunch.

With a no-nonsense attitude, Cyborg calmly kept up the application of sonic blasts, opting for staggered bursts rather than a continuous stream, all the better to keep Blood off-balance. Beast Boy slithered up the Robin-cross as a snake, nibbled through his bonds as mice, and then deftly hopped down and switched to donkey in time to catch their unconscious leader on his back.

With an immense display of robotic strength that left the wall in shambles, Blood managed to extricate himself from the hole, using his hands to deflect the blasts enough that his body took minimal damage even as his limbs were smoked and looked substantially the worse for wear. He did one of those effeminate little spinning hops that Cyborg always found so hard to aim through and landed next to a counter full of communion wafers. A sweep from a normal human hand would have just knocked them all to the floor, but the motorized power behind Blood's motion made the little white wafers scatter all over, briefly making aiming right impossible.

"Hey! That's the body of Christ you're makin' me fry here!" he hollered in instinctive indignation, turning his cannon back into a fist and charging forward.

Beast Boy got to Blood before him, roaring in leonine fury with teeth barred and claws extended through a full-on pounce. Blood took a few deep slashes to his steel body with the unexpected attack, claw-marks marring the skull on his chest, before he recovered and deflected the next few swipes and kicked Beast Boy right in the middle of that big green lion face.

Cyborg swung at Blood's smug face only to miss the annoyingly agile pansy by a mile. Grabbing a silvery communion grape juice holder and swung it at Beast Boy with the deftly-curled fingers of one hand while his other hand slammed into Cyborg's chest, sending the hero back half a dozen feet. Beast Boy's forepaws went to his face instinctively, like anyone would when blinded by an acidic substance, and Blood followed that up by stomping on the green lion's head, sending it down to the floor with an extremely loud crack. Beast Boy slumped in a way that Cyborg knew meant he was out of the fight for now, and he groaned, wishing Raven or Starfire had been here.

"Ah, much better," Blood said with another one of his superior chuckles, actually taking the time to brush himself off. "Now it's back to just the two of us and debates on the inherent strength of mind over matter. Steel over flesh. Ambition over sentiment. As it was meant to be, Cyborg."

"I guess it's a prerequisite to bein' a supervillain that you have to be full of yourself," Cyborg growled, looking over Beast Boy and not seeing any serious injuries like broken bones. But it was hard to tell, he wasn't an expert on lions, after all. "I guess I shouldn't expect you to have any respect, worshipin' Raven's big red daddy and all, but this is pretty low even for you. Defiling a place of worship where people come to get close to God."

"Oh, Cyborg, ever so charming in your naiveté!" Blood waggled a finger. "The divine isn't found in escaping the world, but in relishing it. We live to grow, to improve, to evolve by destroying those who are less than ourselves. Life is full of predation, and perfection requires, heh, _sacrifices_."

"Sacrifices. Right." Cyborg's good eye narrowed. "Is that why you tried to flood the city way back when? Giving souls up for Trigon?"

"One of many reasons. The Great Trigon is ever-hungry for new souls. Much like the Christian God. '_All who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman._' Second Chronicles, chapter fifteen."

"Don't give me that BULLSHIT!" Cyborg snarled with a sudden fury he'd been unaware had been lurking underneath his outer demeanor until it spurted up like lava forcing its way through the earth's crust. "Anyone can pick verses to suit their own selfish purposes, but '_Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love!_' Don't you DARE stand here in a sacred house full of the congregation you slaughtered and the heroes you hurt to give them up to a big red ogre!"

"Oh, _very_ good, Cyborg," Blood said condescendingly, one eyebrow quirked, his teeth showing in his smile.

He made a job with stiffened fingers, and Cyborg blocked it with his forearm, the attack scraping off an outer layer of metal from both his arms and Blood's sonic cannon-weakened digits. The two of them jostled for a better position, but with all the haphazard furniture in the way, nothing more happened for a few moments as each tried to circle the other.

"Touched a nerve, did I? I see this location has more relevance to your weaker human half than I thought. I _told_ you, sacrifices are _required_. All gods want them, red or otherwise. '_You must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock. You are to gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God._' That one's Deuteronomy. You know that one, don't you? The one with Moses? I do so love to imagine what it must have looked like, ahhhh, and smelled like!" Blood's nostrils inhaled air in a hissing whiff. "The cattle and the people and the furniture and the money and all the food together, burning for God. Forgive me if, hahah, I don't think _yours_ morally superior to the strength in cruelty offered by Trigon the Terrible! At least _mine_ gives strength _back _and with great consistency! What does _yours_ offer you, besides false hope and arguably a one-time regenerating aura fluke?"

Missing Raven's presence just about more than he ever had, _knowing_ she would have had a theologically appropriate response that would work better than the only words that came to Cyborg's mind, (which were to tell Blood to go to Hell), Cyborg gave up on the furniture and just crashed through it with his more than ample weight and bulk, mixing anger-wild haymakers with a few quick blasts from his feet. Blood saw it all coming, and used the environment to his advantage; even though his limbs were getting too damaged to really block everything perfectly, he still managed to avoid any serious hits by ducking behind pillars, hopping over downed chairs and other detritus that Cyborg had to barrel through more clumsily. This continued on for long enough that even in the middle of the action Cyborg's brain caught up with the rest of him and figured out a suitable response, finally.

"'_Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall... to the ground!... apart from the will of your Father! And even the very hairs of your head are all... NUMBERED!_'"

"Pretty cocky from a bald man," Blood put in mockingly, lifting one hand to preen his remaining horn-like projection of gray hair.

With an enraged sound somewhere between a grunt and a yell fit for a football game tied at the last ten seconds, Cyborg dove forward and slammed both fists into Blood's stomach while the man was busy posing. To finish it he let his hands off their wrists by rocket power, propelling Brother Blood into the same front wall he'd plunged into at the start of the fight, making a twin hole to the first one.

"You didn't... let me... finish," Cyborg said lowly, panting and moping sweat from his forehead. "_'So don't be afraid. You are worth more than many..._ freaking... _sparrows._'" The fists returned to his wrists, causing Blood to slump down, only just managing to catch himself and stand with a pained groan.

Blood, still hunched, looked up with a wild, almost demoniacally maniacal expression, simultaneously pained and pleased. "Sparrows burnt at altars, Cyborg. Sparrows killed for your God. Because even a loving God knows that blood debts require blood to pay." He straightened to his usual semi-regal posture, visage only hampered by the plaster still stuck to his hair and shoulders. "Yes, let's all live like the sparrows, content in their worthless little lives, without great men like you and I to provide leadership! A foolish people requires harsh Gods through harsh priests. Tough love, if you will. '_I will pour out my wrath on you and breathe out my fiery anger against you; I will deliver you into the hands of brutal men, men skilled in destruction._' So remember that one the next time you wonder why a loving God would let men like me do what we want."

Cyborg charged again, intent on finishing it before Blood could get into a better position and get his wind back. Blood surprised him with sudden gymnastic-like energy, actually hopping onto the middle of the wall and using it to jump behind Cyborg. Cyborg whirled, but too slow; already a quick kick to the knee had him off-balance, and Blood finished it off with an uncharacteristically uncouth head slam that floored him.

For all that he was much smaller than Cyborg, Blood still had a fair amount of weight that was evident when his foot slammed onto Cyborg's chest.

"You've been slacking in your studies lately, if this is the best you have to offer. Where's your God now, hmm?"

"Right here!" Robin shouted just before braining Blood with the heavy cross that had previously served as part of the Boy Wonder's restraints.

The villain went flying the length of the room and crashed just in front of the pulpit, out cold.

Cyborg and Robin shared a look that sent a number of sentiments back and forth between them. Gratitude, chagrin, anxiety, worry, relief, all mixed up together.

"Thanks for saving me," Cyborg managed, getting up.

"Thanks for saving me too." They shared a very small smile.

"I liked him better when he was just an evil teacher," Cyborg mourned glumly, wiping more sweat from his face.

"Me too, Cy. Me too."


	10. Chapter 10

**This was supposed to be about Starfire, hence the title. And somehow, it turned into being about more about Robin and Cyborg. Nonetheless, I enjoyed where the story went, and I hope you all got something out of it too.**

**The review charity drive is over. Those interested in the results, feel free to check my profile. Reviewers, I thank you for your time and your trouble.**

10

It was Robin's worst nightmare come true.

They were stuck in heavy traffic.

There was no crime to serve as an excuse to teleport, fly or otherwise take drastic measures.

Nothing good was on the radio.

And the 'God' thing had come up. _Again_.

"You know you're going to have to talk about it sometime," Raven told him with a severe maternal tone. "You might as well get it over with."

He sunk down in his seat and tried to avoid looking at anyone. "Batman never made me talk about it."

"The floppy paper reading material for girls that I have been using to research your Earth ways have expressed that open communication and conversation are signs of a relationship that is as solid as the rock! I understand that this is a good thing, although for some reason a relationship that is rocky with a Y is a bad thing. Do you not wish for our relationship to be like a rock without the Y, Robin?"

"Oh God."

"See, you're halfway there, man."

"Shut up, Cyborg."

"Heheh. Oh, move up time!" Cyborg's foot hit the pedal, and they scooted up in a short spurt that caused everyone to sway briefly. It was going to be a long ride home.

"Come on, dude, just tell us why you hate God! It's not that hard! We won't judge you or stuff, you're in a super safe place right now."

"I don't _hate_ God," Robin said meekly, feeling trapped as all four sets of eyes of varying levels of spirituality honed in on him.

This was going to involve feelings. They knew how he hated having feelings. Why couldn't they just let him not have feelings? Was that so much to ask? He let his head thump against the glass of the window, repressing the urge to rub his still-healing chest. No point in drawing attention to something that had taken quite a few days for Raven to stop being neurotic over. He was the only person who really tried to be rational all the time, annoying but true.

"I don't get what you're so scared a'," Cyborg said, tapping the wheel. "I mean, we've already proven that we can work together without judgin' each other even though we've all got huge differences. But you're the only one who can't even _talk_ about this stuff."

"Yeah, exactly! Did a priest molestored you when you were a kid or somethin'?"

"Shut up, Beast Boy," Raven, Robin, and Cyborg all said while Starfire tried to figure out what 'molestored' meant. "And no," Robin added, carefully avoiding everyone's eyes again. "It's nothing like that."

The quiet stretched out, broken only by occasional car horn honks and someone a few cars away yelling in Korean-accented English. Robin finally sighed and gave in, hoping that at least if he gave them what he wanted they'd let it go so they could get back to how things were supposed to be.

"It's just... horrible things happen," he said into the horn-speckled quiet. "And God doesn't do anything. And that makes me angry, because if _I_ were God, I'd do something. So I figure either he's a jerk or he doesn't exist, and I'd rather it be the second one because the first one is depressing. People talk a lot about salvation and things abstractly, but it's the concrete that I've seen make a real difference in people's lives. If you want to save someone, you go out and make the world a better place. Praying is just mailing a letter to an imaginary person so you don't have to do anything yourself." Cyborg started to interrupt, but Robin raised his voice slightly and talked over him. "So that's me, that's my answer. Now if we have to hash this out, then I'd at least like to get the same thing in return. I want you all to tell me." His eyes looked at Cyborg, then Beast Boy, then Raven, then Starfire. "I want you to tell me how any of you can possibly believe in anything up there that actually cares about us. I know I don't have to take my shirt off to remind any of you what kinds of things happen in this world. But if any of you believe in God that much, justify that to me. Give me a reason to believe, if you can."

"I saw my mom and dad die in a river," Beast Boy said quietly, and suddenly the honking car horns weren't so loud anymore. Everyone went still as statues except for Beast Boy, who kept rubbing his knuckles on the back of Cyborg's seat. "I mean, I didn't see the last parts, but I saw the water just go over them. I hate that stupid baptism stuff Jesus lovers do, it makes me thinka that, no 'fence Cy. There was a tribe who took me in. They weren't good people the way a nice white bread Jesus freak would say is good, but they were good people in the way that mattered to me. I went from Africa to America and it was kinda a shock. Heh. But, um. It taught me some things. Going through that. Lemme put it a way you'd like, okay Rob? It's the actions that count. You can find God in a jungle if you want. In the middle of the muddy season when everything's all dirt an' 'skeetos. In the droughts. You don't need a nice carpeted place or one of those baptism dunking things to be holy. You just need t'do what God wants. God's in all of us if we care. He's in the bees and the grass and all the things He gave us, if we care and treat them right and help them treat us right. That's why I believe. 'Cause I'd probably have turned into a monkey and stayed in the jungle forever and been gobbled up by somethin' if people hadn't believed in me and been nice to me. It's like a big circle, but it's like being bigger'n the circle, too."

"Aaaannnndd that beats what I was going to give," Raven said very, very quietly. At first Robin was afraid that Beast Boy would get offended by it, but then he saw the two of them share the tiniest of smirks, and he relaxed.

"I guess I'm not a lot different from string bean here," Cyborg entered into the confessional with pastoral vocal control. "What can I say, we all hurt. Beast Boy, you had it worse than me, I think. My parents are gone... that's kinda their fault. No big mystery there. And I was never close to 'em so it didn't hurt as much as it probably shoulda. Yeah, I lost a good bit of me," he added, thumping his chest with a clang. "Nothin' important though. It's a miracle that I'm even alive, even out of a bed, let alone doin' the stuff we do together. The technology's amazing, sure, but it's amazing because it lets the human part of me make a difference. If I'd been born even ten years ago, maybe just five years ago... _definitely_ if I'd been born to practically any other family in the world... I'd be dead now. I'm not. I like to think we all have things we could thank God for, but He made it _real_ obvious with me." Cyborg chuckled.

Raven went next. With her hood up, she looked almost like a priest, though the confession role was entirely flip-flopped. "I went through life thinking that my existence was an abomination and a curse. I hated life. I hated myself. That... that didn't really change until I met all of you," she admitted with delicate hesitancy. "And if it weren't for all of you, I never would have defeated my father. I know Trigon made me intentionally. I know why I was made from a demon's blood. But now, I have friends who respect me and trust me. I know how to smile. I know what it is to be happy. And so I wonder if maybe the fact that I had a human mother was intentional too. The monks of Azarath taught me many things, but most of it was secular. They didn't want to fill my head with potentially dangerous ideas about spiritual ideals. But I'm learning. And I find that every time I give the world a chance, I learn something interesting that makes the world seem at least as wonderful as it is terrible."

All eyes turned went Starfire, who ehehed bashfully and toyed with her hair.

"I... I must admit that I feel a little of the disappointment," she confessed, looking down. The faintest drizzle of rain began to patter on the T-Car's roof and speckle the windows. "Not in you, Robin," she added hastily at Robin's blanching expression. "In myself. Friend Cyborg, Raven, and Beast Boy, you have spoken of your feelings for the spiritual in a way that I do not feel that I can match. And worse, I do not think there is anything I can say to change your mind about how _you_ feel, Robin." She smiled wryly, looking beautiful in a sad sort of way. The rain started to come down a bit harder, drowning out the car horns. "I could tell you all of things in my life that make me have faith in that which cannot be seen, but they would be Tamaranian concepts and Tamaranian words. It wouldn't mean anything to any of you no matter how hard I tried to explain it. And I cannot help but feel as though an... an opportunity has been lost here."

"An opportunity, Star?" Robin prompted gently, seeing her hesitate.

She looked up at him again, smiling brighter and yet somehow even sadder. "We have grown together and become closer, have we not? We learned from the times that were not so joyful and turned those times into lessons to make the joyful times even more full of joy and love of life. But this great struggle with the Church has come and went away, and do not see how I have learned anything about it that would make you feel differently, Robin. I feel that I have, as it's said on this planet, flanked the test." In his head, Robin briefly begged everyone to not correct her, and everyone complied. "I should have important and meaningful words to say, because faith and spirituality are important and meaningful things, but I do not. I cannot say anything about what has transpired to make it all the better or to instill within it meaning or morals. I do not know what to say about it, or why it happened. The opportunity is gone and now I have nothing except even more questions, and that frustrates me."

Beast Boy's ears perked. "Hey, maybe _that's_ the lesson!"

Everyone looked at him quizzically.

"That there _isn't_ a lesson," he told them as though talking to stupid children.

"I agree with Beast Boy," Raven said, and Robin heard a fuse in Cyborg's head pop and sizzle gently from shock. "Don't look at me like that, it happens _sometimes_," she snapped irritably. "Faith takes the shape of those who hold it. Like the lives of those who _have_ faith, faith itself needs to change and grow. That means you can't ever wrap it up with a bow and call it 'done.' If you encapsulate it into a single lesson, you render it in stone as a permanent shape when it's meant to grow and shrink - to enlarge and encompass new things, as well as shrink to accept disappointment. If we still have unresolved issues, if things don't get neatly encapsulated into an adventure with a happy ending and an obvious message, that just means we're still keeping our minds open to change. That's what you meant, right, Beast Boy?"

The shapeshifter gave a snaggletoothed grin. "Uh, yeah. Couldn't've put it better myself!"

And that was, for the moment, at least, it. There were no more great confessions or emotional testimonials. There was nothing more to say. All the Titans had apparently arrived at the same place Starfire had complained of being at - a simple lack of words. But there wasn't anything wrong with not having more words to say, sometimes.

Since traffic wasn't letting up and it appeared that they were going to be stuck for quite some time yet, Cyborg turned on the radio. After the standard arguments over the right station, Robin admitted that the one type of religious music he _didn't_ particularly hate was gospel. And that became the team's Cyborg-led introduction to Africa-American spiritual music, belted out with extra 'soul.'

Robin had to forcibly stop himself from singing along to the passionate, happy-melancholy melodies, even as he told himself that it was all ridiculous make believe. Then again, he supposed, a boy who went around fighting crime in costumes with a green furry person, a half-robot, a half-demon and an alien probably wasn't the best person to decide on strict delineations of reality, now, was he?


End file.
